By ETimes
| Various experts under the banner of the Zimbabwe Institute of GeomatIcs (ZIG) will gather in Harare this Thursday for a conference that will focus on a number of issues including the GeoPomona project. Geomatics is made up of several fields that include geographical information science (GISC), engineering survey, land/cadastral survey, mining survey, remote sensing and photogrammetry. This comes as German investor, Geogenix BV, entered into a build, operate and transfer partnership with Harare City Council and took over the dumpsite earlier this year to turn waste into electricity. The project has however been stalked by controversy since then.“The purpose of the 2022 October conference is to discuss issues to do with Waste, Water and Transport management. As you may be aware, we have been having a lot of discussions of late with regards to the Pomona dumpsite waste to energy project. So what we thought necessary as a professional body was to try to have a conference which aligns to that issue,” ZIG President Wilson Mhuri said. “We will have a presentation from GeoPomona, the team that is dealing with the Pomona dumpsite project. This will be an opportunity for them to share with professionals where they are now and where they are going.“ Professionals will also be able to give their ideas on how they can improve on the project. We are looking forward to the discussions pertaining to Pomona from a professional perspective,” Mhuri added. He said deliberations on the issue would also focus on waste management problems in other cities. “The background of our theme came about because of the challenges we are facing in major cities and towns, especially concerning waste management. “City councils are facing challenges in garbage collection. What we are thinking is to say let’s have a discussion where all stakeholders are in one house and look for solutions, especially for waste management in Zimbabwe,” Mhuri said. “We are going to discuss these issues and come up with resolutions and recommendations to various stakeholders so that we can implement an efficient waste management system as well as water and transport management in Zimbabwe as a whole.“ The conference is about coming up with solutions as professionals. So we are having a house full of engineers, surveyors, architects and all built environment professionals discussing how to solve our challenges in Zimbabwe and the world as a whole,” he added. “The conference will be graced by various international players; big companies like OPTRON, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), Digital Earth Africa and Drone Solutions among many others will be part of the event.” “We are going to have quite a number of people from the international scene involved in waste, water and transport management systems so that Zimbabwe can at the end of the day be able to benchmark or take notes from what is happening around the world”. A number of relevant government ministries such as Local Government, Lands and Agriculture will also be part of the conference – Harare |
