Tuesday , 19 March 2024
enfrit
The Massive Commitment of Labor Force (locally called HIMO) strategy found its first application field into a waterwaste channel purification project in Antananarivo city's low level districts. Hundreds of people have been tasked to proceed to cleaning over 20 days. The administration displayed satisfaction as a result. The local population has it however quite a different way.

The capital city’ slums not yet on the mend

“It actually makes no difference to us,” replied a surveyed man in his fifties, who has been living over the last decade in the district of Manarintsoa stretching all along the wastewater channel of Andriantany. Referring to his age, he obviously did not take part in the purification work. Supported by the President of the Republic, the project aimed precisely at make a channel regularly overflowing at every rainy season and over flooding the surroundings with garbage and dirty water, ready for use again. The HIMO project has actually led to the removal of a very small quantity of floating plants and garbage from the channel. “Removing mud and the bulk of the garbage requires more effective machines than we are” conceded someone committed in the project. About 150 people stemming from the lowest social class were paid on a daily basis to clean the channel. This later winter job enabled a number of them to make both ends meet, at least for a short period of time, but certainly not on any longer time. The project was designed as a short term action from scratch, results of which in the end failed from fully proving satisfying. The committed labor force earned merely enough to hold on over the next few days. And the slums will not be better off for so much work. Not even the people living near the Andriantany channel appear utterly optimistic. “This incomplete purification action is little more than a shot in the dark” said Modeste, another resident of the slums. Only a sustainable long term project is a pledge to significant and long term achievements. This is not.