- At least 65 people have been killed and a number of missing people have not yet been fully accounted for by the landslide at the huge Koshe landfill in the Addis Ababa area on Saturday afternoon. It is said that more than 150 people were collecting in the local garbage when the mountain of garbage came over them. It is said that every day more than 500 poor people work in the Koshe landfill to take advantage of everything.
Some of Kosh’s garbage collectors, who have accumulated the capital’s muddy ruins for more than 50 years, had their huts built to be closer to the rough mountain where they had their livelihood when trucks arrived every morning. That is why I believe that the death toll will be much higher than the 48 initially mentioned by the authorities. Thousands of people in landfills around the world make a living recovering anything useful from waste under the harshest working conditions.
The authorities in Addis Ababa have used it to commemorate the accident with the waste solution on its way... with the construction of an incinerator plant. The GAIA coalition, which brings together anti-cremation movements and associations of precarious workers working in garbage collection, denounces this unnecessary waste: "In Addis Ababa they are going to spend 120 million dollars to build an incinerator that will be managed by foreign companies, burning by the way the compostable and recyclable items. Instead, solutions must be organized around these local garbage collectors, organizing bold plans at both the social and environmental levels."