The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) is advocating for a system through which Ugandan manufacturers will be compelled to collect from the market plastics that are disposed of after product consumption.
NEMA’s Executive Director, Tom Okurut told lawmakers on the Natural Resources Committee on Thursday, October 17 that the environmental regulator is set to hold a meeting with manufacturers aiming at forging a harmonized position on the mechanism for collecting used plastics to ensure they don’t end up in lakes or alternatively hire a third party that will be responsible for retrieving the used plastics.
The meeting between NEMA officials and Parliament followed a petition by manufacturers to stop government from continuing with the plan to ban recycling plants in the country, with manufacturers arguing that since Parliament passed the National Environmental Act, they have been trying to invest in these recycling plants as the law requires but now they do not know whether they should continue or not.
“We want the manufacturers to put in place a system to collect the plastics or employ a third party who would be collecting the plastics people return and ensure that these plastics are collected without them going back to the recycles of dumping and going to the water,” said Okurut.
Okurut stated that as regulators they have never implemented cabinet decision of cancelling all land titles in wetlands because up to now they have never received the UGX 2.1 billion from the Ministry of Finance which funds were meant to facilitate the process.
