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2.2 Topic i: Training

East Asia/Pacific

In industrialized countries of the region, educational levels of workers and management staff for MSWM are generally high. Schemes for training and human resource development at both the national and local levels are well funded and organized. Operators of MSWM facilities are required to attend courses and pass certification examinations for promotion or to hold jobs. In addition to hands-on training on technology used in MSWM, health and safety courses are conducted for both sanitation workers and management staff. Staff at management levels are often sent for further education. There are also regular promotional campaigns organized by the government and NGOs to promote waste minimization through recycling/reuse. MSWM facilities are opened to the public for educational purposes. All Japanese schoolchildren visit the local incinerator and learn about recycling in their area.

In the developing countries, however, although there is training, these activities are severely limited by the lack of resources. There are inadequate funds for promotional campaigns and training by government and NGOs.

There are many activities relating to training and human resources development that occur primarily in the industrialized countries:

• At the local level, municipal authorities conduct in-house training courses on technology, health, and safety at regular intervals to update and upgrade the skills of their workforce.
• At the regional and national level, cost-efficient models of MSWM systems and appropriate technology for local application are developed. Research programs for waste minimization, including the development of low-pollution products, closed-loop recycling processes, and other low-pollution manufacturing processes, are formulated and carried out, often jointly with industries and institutions of higher learning. Some countries also sponsor demonstration projects for technology transfer to achieve waste minimization through the improvement of manufacturing processes, recycling, and reuse.
• Government agencies involved in MSWM issue handbooks to the industry and waste separation and recycling/reuse guidebooks to the community in general (there are numerous examples in Japan).
• Waste management officers are sent abroad to learn about new technologies and to attend workshops or conferences.
• Professional bodies and trade and manufacturers' associations also conduct seminars, workshops, and demonstration projects for the benefit of their members.

South and West Asia

Special training in the field of solid waste management is a fairly recent phenomenon in this region, and it has yet to adequately include important topics such as waste minimization and socioeconomic considerations. Nationally trained professionals usually are educated as engineers or doctors and have had short courses in waste management, which may be led by foreign consultants. Most of the staff of sanitation and public health departments are not trained for their jobs, but may become very knowledgeable about routine operations through field experience; unfortunately, they usually are not able to bring this experience to bear on the curriculum of training programs. Systematic training does not extend to the street-level workers. In smaller towns, with the exception of Israeli ones, public bodies for waste management cannot afford to recruit specialized staff, nor would the countries be able to supply them if they could.

Universities in the region have not taken sustained interest in the practicalities of solid waste management, but a few are involved in research and training. The Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, however, occasionally runs short courses for municipal managers, including those from South and West Asia.

Increasingly, special institutions are being developed (in Bangladesh, India, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sri Lanka) that have incorporated waste management into their work. An example of a regional center is the Centre for Environmental Health Activities in Amman, Jordan, which organizes and supports a number of research and training programs in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The Municipal Training and Research Institute in Karachi has a mandate to provide such services. In Kathmandu, during the period of German technical assistance (1984-1994) the Solid Waste Management and Resource Mobilization Centre undertook some training. The oldest institutions involved with solid waste management are the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and the All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in India. They, however, lack the resources to have a substantial impact in this field for a country as large as India.

Most of the expertise for training has been supplied by international agencies such as World Health Organization (South East Asia Program Office in New Delhi and the regional office in Malaysia), the United Nations Children Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Centre for Regional Development (Nagoya), and the Asian Development Bank. Bilateral involvement has come from the Overseas Development Administration, UK, drawing upon the Water, Engineering and Development Centre of Loughborough University of Technology and the Development Administration Group of Birmingham University; the Netherlands development ministry; German technical assistance (GTZ); and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), to name a few.

Substantial bilateral projects for MSWM that include training aspects have been few; the most important one in the subcontinent was the decade-long German project in Kathmandu, which ended in 1994. The European Union is currently supporting a project in waste analysis and training methods. Bilateral aid has sponsored a few conferences on solid waste management that have discussed issues of professional development (e.g., Dutch aid to the Workshop on Linkages in Solid Waste Management in Bangalore, 1994).

A complaint in the past about training relating to MSWM has been that engineers were taught ideal management systems, such as "sanitary landfills," when there was no prospect of constructing these for their cities and towns. The slow progress in improving MSWM had led to a questioning of the conventional approach, and key institutions in the region aim to supply training in integrated solid waste management in the future.

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