Mirziyoyev: modernizing waste management system is an important task

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev instructed to modernize the waste management system during a regular meeting on August 10. According to the President, this is a public health issue, an urgent problem related to the future of the nation.

At the beginning of the meeting, Mirziyoyev also raised the issue of countering the coronavirus pandemic. According to him, recovery rates from coronavirus infection have significantly increased over the past week.

With this in mind, he noted the importance of continuing to live and work in the conditions of the pandemic, without slackening attention to protecting the life and health of citizens, gradually easing the requirements of quarantine.

Over the past three years, 742 units of equipment for waste transportation were purchased and 204 landfills were modernized at the expense of $38.2 million allocated from the budget for waste management. Mirziyoyev criticized the state of affairs in this direction.

The coverage of the population with sanitation services is currently 66 per cent. Mirziyoyev gave instructions to increase this figure to 90 percent by the end of the year, including through broad involvement of private enterprises in the sphere.

Meanwhile, the participation of the private sector shows good results in waste collection and recycling. Wherever such enterprises operate, the population is satisfied with the quality of services.

The President instructed to increase the level of recycling of household waste to 25 percent by the end of the year and at least to 35 percent in 2021.

The meeting also discussed the effectiveness of using funds raised from international financial institutions.

Another issue on the agenda was expanding environmental control.

Emissions from some plants exceed the standards, which harms the environment and causes justified dissatisfaction among citizens.

In this regard, the State Committee for ecology and environmental protection was instructed to provide each region with mobile laboratories for rapid analysis of air pollution. The Deputy Prime Minister was instructed to develop a program for installing modern and modernizing existing local treatment facilities at 240 large industrial enterprises with high and medium risk to the environment.