A report published in The Daily Star yesterday revealed that Aminbazar landfill on the outskirts of the city is short-staffed, ill-equipped and has been struggling to manage solid waste since long. According to Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) officials, the landfill is running with less than 20 percent of the required staff. Although a recycling plant, a leachate collection pond as well as a treatment plant were supposed to be in the landfill, according to its original design, those were either not built or utilised in all these years. There is also a shortage of heavy equipment to give the daily soil covering on the waste.

While the three crucial posts of waste management supervisors are vacant, there are also no mechanical or civil engineers or waste management professionals at the site. Only 19 people are managing over 3,000 tonnes of solid waste generated daily in the landfill from the DNCC areas. The leachate collection pond and treatment plant were non-functional till 2018, while the recycling plant still exists on paper only. Since there is no manpower for waste segregation and recycling, the landfill authorities allow in hundreds of waste pickers to collect recyclable materials from the dumped garbage. The equipment shortage is another issue that is making the work difficult for its staff—out of the six excavators, eight chain dozers, two-wheel dozers and one payloader at the landfill, only the payloader is functional at present. It is really surprising how all this equipment can become non-functional within just five years of the purchase.

In order to keep the landfill properly functional, recruitment of necessary manpower is crucial. The heavy machinery that is lying idle should also be repaired immediately. As both the Aminbazar and Matuail landfills' capacity will exhaust within a very short time, the authorities should make a proper plan to manage the city's waste in a sustainable way. Acquiring more land to expand the landfills does not seem like a good idea in this land-scarce city. While setting up power plants in the landfills seems like a good idea, it will not solve all the problems regarding waste management. The city authorities must overhaul the entire waste management system, from collection and segregation to recycling and treatment, to manage Dhaka's waste management problem.