Phnom Penh, “a city of garbage”; Globe article.
Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:10 pm
Phnom Penh and the Cintri garbage problem.
14 September 2017
As Cambodia’s capital becomes a modern metropolis, its sole garbage collection company is failing to keep up. Can Phnom Penh clean up its act?
The men here disappear in late afternoon. They leave their wives and children before the sun sets on low-rise apartment blocks jumbled together along dingy side streets on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. This neighbourhood in the capital’s industrial Dangkao district is the home base of the city’s sole private garbage collection company, Cintri, and hundreds of the workers hired to keep Phnom Penh clean.
By the time morning rolls around, Cintri’s hulking garbage trucks rumble back from the central districts of the capital to the depot at the heart of this community. The drivers drop off the keys on their way out of the gate and gather in small groups for a few hours of drinking rice wine and playing cards before heading home, a sort of nightcap in the middle of the morning.
Cintri, which has had a monopoly on trash collection in the city since 2002, has long complained that it’s being forced to stretch its resources well beyond what was expected of the company when it first signed on to keep Phnom Penh clean. The company has renegotiated its contract with the city multiple times, but it’s not clear what changes have been made, and Cintri won’t say whether the company is profitable.
One can only assume that Cintri has won significant concessions – its trucks have kept pounding the streets even as the population has almost doubled in size. The likelihood that Cintri is making money only compounds the frustration when trash starts spilling onto major boulevards during public holidays, plasters the city when floodwaters recede or simply goes uncollected for no apparent reason.
It also begs the question of why the company has not invested in basic equipment like public bins around the city, or in the safety of its workers by providing them with gloves or boots as they wade through the capital’s refuse. In a city that aims to be a global draw for business and tourism, Cintri is not getting the job done...
http://sea-globe.com/cintri-phnom-penh/
14 September 2017
As Cambodia’s capital becomes a modern metropolis, its sole garbage collection company is failing to keep up. Can Phnom Penh clean up its act?
The men here disappear in late afternoon. They leave their wives and children before the sun sets on low-rise apartment blocks jumbled together along dingy side streets on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. This neighbourhood in the capital’s industrial Dangkao district is the home base of the city’s sole private garbage collection company, Cintri, and hundreds of the workers hired to keep Phnom Penh clean.
By the time morning rolls around, Cintri’s hulking garbage trucks rumble back from the central districts of the capital to the depot at the heart of this community. The drivers drop off the keys on their way out of the gate and gather in small groups for a few hours of drinking rice wine and playing cards before heading home, a sort of nightcap in the middle of the morning.
Cintri, which has had a monopoly on trash collection in the city since 2002, has long complained that it’s being forced to stretch its resources well beyond what was expected of the company when it first signed on to keep Phnom Penh clean. The company has renegotiated its contract with the city multiple times, but it’s not clear what changes have been made, and Cintri won’t say whether the company is profitable.
One can only assume that Cintri has won significant concessions – its trucks have kept pounding the streets even as the population has almost doubled in size. The likelihood that Cintri is making money only compounds the frustration when trash starts spilling onto major boulevards during public holidays, plasters the city when floodwaters recede or simply goes uncollected for no apparent reason.
It also begs the question of why the company has not invested in basic equipment like public bins around the city, or in the safety of its workers by providing them with gloves or boots as they wade through the capital’s refuse. In a city that aims to be a global draw for business and tourism, Cintri is not getting the job done...
http://sea-globe.com/cintri-phnom-penh/