déchets. stigmatisations, commerces, politiques ... - Viva Rio en Haiti

local sovereignty, pulverizing the unifying action
of the public authorities. The words of the director
of the UNDP project in Carrefour Feuilles confi
rm this idea in direct reference to VR: “we could
take over Bel Air, the local council needs to decide
whether VR is going to remain responsible for Bel
Air or whether we’re going to take over.”
At a much smaller scale, inserted in a different
network of institutions and funding agencies,
the project developed by the Atletic d’Ayiti club in
Cité Soleil presents other virtualities from the fi eld
of intervention in the waste sector. The project involves
a partnership between two teams, one from
the University of Lyon and the other from Quisqueya
University (Port-au-Prince). The initiative is led
by a French doctoral student (whose work should
result in a thesis) and receives fi nancial and infrastructural
support from the club’s owner. The
scheme involves the recycling of garbage collected
by Ministry of Public Works trucks from the Croix
de Bossales market region, rich in organic matter.
Dozens of workers are employed by the project
to separate and clean waste (including water sachets)
and store the non-organic garbage. Organic
waste is used for composting and growing vegetables
that will later be sold in the zone. Though
not clearly worked out precisely how yet, the plan
is to stimulate waste collection in the area surrounding
the center by purchasing garbage from
the residents. According to the person in charge of
the project, the eventual aim is to reach a population
of 200,000 inhabitants.
Setting aside the big ambitions and any assessment
of the realistic possibilities of this initiative,
it is worth emphasizing the unique confi guration
of which it forms part: private companies
and university institutions, in the case of the Lyon
team with a lengthy history of implementing
similar projects in various parts of the world, especially
in Africa.
The project’s critics once again draw attention
to its lack of sustainability (depending on
support from a private sponsor), to the fact it involves
substituting the work of public authorities
and principally to two other elements, also found
in the criticisms leveled at the UNDP project: fi rstly,
as a specialist from the AFD stated, these projects
confuse street cleaning and waste processing,
while recycling (the high points of these alternative
initiatives) is, critics argue, unable to fund the
cost of cleaning and waste management in a city
like Port-au-Prince; secondly, there is no guarantee
that technology and management will later be
transferred to the state institutions (a point also
underlined by representatives from the Ministry
of Public Works, for example).
These discussions are politically very heavily
loaded, of course. Some argue that the state
must be responsible for the problem, despite being
aware that dealing with waste “is necessarily
a loss-making activity:” indeed for this very reason
it should be a duty of the public authorities. Others
emphasize community participation, promote
forms of self-management and self-fi nancing, arguing
in terms of self-sustainability, but always
relying, somewhat paradoxically, on non-refundable
external resources, whether international organizations
or private corporations.
In the context of this debate we should highlight
the initiative developed by GRET, which at
the time of the research was awaiting approval of
a pilot garbage collection project in the Martisans
region. At least in theory, the ‘social engineering’
techniques implemented by GRET in other areas
(notably water kiosks) are guided by the installation
of the project and by the immediate transfer
of the latter to the community (via committees) in
partnership with state agencies, also planning for
a quick withdrawal from the zone. The initiative
aims to coordinate garbage collection networks
with systems of payment by the population. This
is another polemical point: should the poor population
of these zones be required to pay for garbage
collection? GRET argues that it should, as in
the case of water provision, less as a form of try-
36 As well as the UNDP, the project also receives support
from private enterprise, banks and large companies,
which made cash donations for the purchase of land
given to the local council. On site the garbage is separated
into different types (metals, plastics, cardboard,
organix waste and glass), which are stored for later
recycling. The inorganic waste is sold (to the company
GS), while for now the organic waste is sent to the
Truitier dump, although there are plans to purchase
new land nearby where a composting program will
be begun. The showcase project is the fabrication of
briquettes from recycled material as a substitute for
charcoal. At the time of the research (3 years after the
start of the project) the briquettes are still accumulating
in the depots alongside other types of garbage with
no sign of commercialization beginning.
GARBAGE | 55