LIRA– Lira University students have decided to join Lira City Council and other stakeholders to keep the city clean through garbage collection.
The university’s students have developed an IT application [App] to help the city in garbage collection and management.
The App [UGClean] was developed by Sarah Kwerit, a student of Community Psychology, together with her counterparts in Public Health.
According to the developers, the App will ease the identification of garbage points, the category of the garbage, the target group, and the amount of waste.
According to the university’s Deputy Vice-chancellor, in charge of Academic Affairs, Prof Dokotum Opio Okaka, the App will also make it easy for people to participate in garbage collection.
The App was launched on Saturday by Lira City mayor Sam Atul after the students led by Prof Okaka took time off their different weekend schedules to clean the city centre.
Prof Okaka said the university is not an institution designed to bring transformation to the cities and great change to the communities that it serves.
“As the Deputy Vice-Chancellor in charge of Academic Affairs, it is a very proud moment for me, for our students to show that the university is an institution that can bring transformation to the people,” he said.
Talking about the garbage collection App, Okaka said: “This is going to be a game changer in Lira City and I believe in many other cities across the country since the students as well believe in this.”
He applauded Lira City authorities for working together with the university to find solutions to challenges that communities face.
Okaka encouraged people in the city to download the App from Google Playstore and use it to keep garbage out of their homes as opposed to trucks that pick garbage from specific points.
Despite the development of the new App, heaps of garbage continue to pile up on the streets of Lira City such as Noteber, Olwol, Bala, Lira Bus Park, and Obangakene.
The growing population of city dwellers, undersigned system for garbage disposal, and breakdown of garbage collection trucks among others are behind the challenges.
Moris Odongo, a bodaboda operator in the city said for quite some time, he had raised the issue of garbage in the city but was not being taken seriously. “I want to thank Lira University for the intervention and coming to address our problem,” he said.
Mayor Atul said the App developed by the university’s students for garbage collection comes at the right time when the council wants to keep the city clean, which he said is one of their agenda.
“Ordinarily you may think you are not doing much but I can assure you this is a lot and I want to thank you sincerely on behalf of Lira City,” he added.
https://thecooperator.news/lira-university-students-win-shs-1-127bln-to-implement-their-innovations/
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