Cleaning Campaign in Sana’a and Aden

Since 2015, all urban areas in Yemen have suffered greatly from the lack of public services due to the ongoing conflict.

Solid waste management is one of these services that have deteriorated the most because of the partial collapse of local Cleaning Funds. As a result, this has caused an accumulation of solid wastes on the streets and within the local neighborhoods of these urban areas. The local public funds in different locations around Yemen face many challenges to cope with the situation and provide their services including financial and capacity. This condition in addition to the poor sanitation system has contributed to increasing the humanitarian situation and risks wave of different diseases.

In order to carry out an effective intervention, UNOPS intensified coordination efforts and provided support to address the crisis using the integration approach and synergy between two local actors with different donors. Coordination meetings were conducted between UNOPS management and technical team as well as the local funds, officials to discuss the Cleaning Funds’ challenges, needs and the support required by UNOPS in both projects.

UNOPS is directly implementing the Solid Waste Management subprojects including waste collection campaigns, to complement the capacity of the local Cleaning Fund in Sana’a, Aden and Hodeida by collecting and disposing of accumulated waste.  Furthermore, they funded two large cleaning campaigns in Sana’a and Aden cities by supporting Local Cleaning Funds (LCIFs) in both cities and hiring local contractor(s) in accordance to agreed schedules, quantities and locations and disposing these collected wastes into a predefined site at the city landfill with a financial support funded by World Bank,IDA.

In the first year, the Cleaning campaign completed about 60,000m3 of accumulated waste has been collected in Sana’a out of 130,000m3 of total target quantity. In Aden, the cleaning campaign collected and disposed around 100,000m3 of accumulated wastes out of actual needs of 905,000m3 that need to be collected and disposed of safely in Aden city.

WASH project funded by OCHA (KSA and UAE) has rented equipment to support the local Cleaning Funds in Aden and Sana’a at an overall budget of US 4.306.000. The equipment including Landfill Bulldozer, Landfill Wheel Loader, Shovel Truck, Trailer head truck, Waste compactor trucks, and Tipper trucks.