Waste Wise Cities Koidu: Koidu New Sembehun City Council Forms a South-South Cooperation and Learning Partnership with Kushtia Municipality, in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
With support from the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and UN-Habitat, the Koidu New Sembehun City Council (KNSCC) in the Republic of Sierra Leone has established a city-to-city South-South partnership on municipal solid waste management best practices with Kushtia Municipality, in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. This city-to-city partnership is one of the important outcomes of the “South-South Cooperation in Sustainable Waste Management – Waste Wise Koidu” pilot initiative of UNOSSC’s South-South Cities Project and implemented by the Solid Waste Management Team of UN-Habitat, in partnerships with KNSCC and other local stakeholders. The partnership is borne out of the purpose to build a bilateral relationship between the two cities on exchanges and experience learnings on good practices and local solutions to municipal solid waste management best practices.
Kushtia Municipality is referred to as the Change Maker City in the context of this partnership. Kushtia Municipality will provide support to KNSCC to ensure effective and efficient solid waste management, especially in the areas of South-South knowledge sharing, solid waste management financing, and public-private partnership building.
“As a council, under my leadership as the mayor, we remain committed to this agreement with Kushtia and there is a lot we can take home from them. I am also happy with the support coming from our funding agency (UNOSSC) and the role UN-Habitat is playing in this pilot project. As a council, we are committed to strengthening the waste management sector in Koidu and this cannot be achieved working in isolation. That is why I am very happy about this agreement I and my colleague mayor in Kushtia have signed,” said the Mayor of KNSCC – Komba Mathew Sam.