Assessing Knowledge Attitudes and Practices of Kanyogoga Residents Towards Municipal Waste disposal:

Abstract

Kampala is the only big city in Uganda and this attracts huge populations flocking the city for greener pastures. This comes with it huge burdens of municipal solid waste, Kampala like other big cities around the globe are not any different and while the challenges and solutions may differ, the problem is general. This report looks at the basics; knowledge, attitude and practices of households in Kanyogoga, a zone in Bukasa parish, Makindye division regarding solid waste management. The study sought to understand the connections between the objectives; knowledge, attitudes practices and municipal waste burden in the zone. To find out how much each objective influenced increased poor solid waste disposal in the zone. Emphasis was majorly put on household refuse with the study majorly using observation, questionnaire and checklist for the investigations. The research design was cross sectional with the study area being Kanyogoga zone and the study population as all residents staying in the zone, house hold heads were most preferred to answer using random sampling technique. The sample size was determined using Kish and Leslie formula and it was 72 respondents each representing a household. The study findings point out that though the levels of literacy were low in the zone, with more people having studied primary level than any other level, the people generally had knowledge on some aspects of solid waste management, they knew the consequences of poor refuse disposal, they knew one or two things about primary storage facilities though confessed they could not afford the more specific factory made ones. Attitudes were a very big problem with most of them having a very poor attitude towards waste disposal. But the major problems were found in practices of the households towards refuse disposal, most of them had primary storage facilities majorly comprising of old paper and metallic boxes, polythene bags, gunny bags and low density polythene bags, there were no reuse or recycling practices neither was there segregation. Most of the households blamed the problem to the inconsistency of the KCCA truck in collecting the garbage and the lack of garbage spots. The community itself sought solutions to its problems and the common ones were massive sensitization, provision of enough trucks and doing bulungi bwa nsi. The study recommended putting more emphasis on reuse and recycling practices to decrease on the waste being generated each day because there is so much the community can use the waste for like the organic waste may be used as manure or as a raw material in the manufacture of briquettes to supplement on the energy sources. There should be increased provision of information to households through their local leaders.