Egypt’s planning, environment ministries to conduct study on solid waste status

CAIRO - 3 December 2020: Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said, Minister of Environment Yasmin Fouad, and Chairman of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) Khairat Barakat attended the signing of a cooperation protocol between CAPMAS and the Waste Management Regulatory Agency to carry out a study on the current status of solid waste.

Dr.El-Said said that the goals of the National Agenda for Sustainable Development, Egypt’s Vision 2030, focuses on three main dimensions: economic, social, and environmental dimensions, which intersect with each other. Hence, it is not possible to achieve economic and social goals without taking into account the environmental dimension, in the context of preserving the rights of future generations.

El-Said explained that the protocol aims for collecting a large set of data on the environmental sector, stressing that the data is the basic basis for setting all different development policies, so any policy for solid waste management will depend heavily on the important role of CAPMAS in collecting various data on the environment sector.

The minister pointed out that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has ratified the waste regulation and management bill, and that the Ministry of Environment is leading this great effort deployed to manage  the solid waste system.

On her side,  Yasmine Fouad affirmed that this study aims to update the data on the municipal solid waste system that was approved by the Egyptian president in 2019 with three programs: infrastructure, employment contracts, institutional support and community participation, by studying the conditions, problems, and challenges of managing existing waste in preparation for developing the plan to meet the challenges and take appropriate decisions to improve the climate that serves the work environment.

The Minister of Environment added that the study will examine the conditions of workers in the system, whether at the official and informal levels, the private sector and civil society, which will help lay the foundations for dealing with the waste system during the coming period, especially after the issuance of the first law for waste management of all kinds in Egypt.

Fouad explained that this step comes within the efforts of the ministry's Waste Management Regulatory Authority to organize, follow-up, monitor, evaluate and develop integrated waste management activities. It also targets to attract and encourage investments in this field in pursuit of sustainable development, and efforts to transform the informal sector operating in waste management into formal sector and integrate it into the system to improve its effectiveness and sustainability.