The City of Kigali, security agencies and National Rehabilitation Services (NRS) have started preparations to facilitate effective reintegration of hundreds of rehabilitated drug addicts, who are set to graduate at Iwawa Rehabilitation and Vocational Skills Development Centre (IRVSDC).
A total of 989 former drug dealers and addicts are set to graduate on February 9, in various vocational fields. According to the vice mayor for the City of Kigali in charge of Social Affairs, Patricia Muhongerwa, the whole plan falls under the national programme to fight the scourge of drug abuse. “Today (Wednesday) a team of officials from the City of Kigali including all vice mayors in charge of social affairs from Nyarugenge, Gasabo and Kicukiro; security agencies and NRS are traveling to Iwawa ahead of the graduation to specifically profile the graduands, categorize them according to their skills and find ways to find them jobs,” Muhongerwa said.
The majority 800 of those graduating were from the City of Kigali. “With majority graduating having sent by the City of Kigali, we need to exactly know their names, their parents or families; if they are residents of City of Kigali or from other parts of the country. These deeper discussions with them will inform the best appropriate action, for example, if some of them have families capable and ready to support them,” she added. Those who don’t have families or whose families have no means, she said, will be supported to utilize the acquired skills.
“Together with security organs, we have partnered with groups and companies like Reserve Force, Utexrwa and business enterprises established by rehabilitated former drug dealers and addicts; we want to ensure that when these youth graduate they find better alternative and a better life,” she said. This, she noted, is meant to lay a solid ground to prevent the young people from going back into abusing drugs.
According to Commissioner of Police (CP) Theos Badege, the Rwanda National Police (RNP) spokesperson, such initiatives supplement efforts to kill the market. “It is not only about fighting the supply chain; it’s also about ensuring that the addicted are rehabilitated and given a better life, which facilitates in killing the consumption market,” said CP Badege. This, he said, is a general concept that also involves parents, schools, different youth groups, faith-based organizations, local leaders as well as owners and managers of hospitality facilities to prevent the young people from abusing drugs and to ensure dealers are arrested and prosecuted. RNP and the ministries of Youth, Local Government and Health started a countrywide awareness campaign in December last year specifically to bring on board various groups reverse the scourge of drug trafficking and abuse in the country.
According to Aime Bosenibamwe, the coordinator of NRS, breaking the chain of supply and killing the local market will also save the government expenses on rehabilitation. Currently, the government spends at least Rwf70 million every month to support and rehabilitate over 3800 drug addicts are Iwawa alone.
The rehabilitation is in two phases; first six months of psychological and health rehabilitation, and six more months for vocational training. “The government is now investing more in rehabilitation and awareness as means to kill the local market and save the youth, the majority victims.
Gitagata is being upgraded to accommodate at least 1000 people up from 400 currently including girls below the age of 18 years, and women aged between 18 and 35 years,” Bosenibamwe said. “Similarly, Nyamagabe rehabilitation centre once completed will accommodate about 2000 people.
All these are government programmes designed to make sure that the young people whose life is ruined, get a better life and to support the joint efforts to combat the scourge of narcotic drugs in our country,” he added. Since 2012, about 12228 addicted youth aged between 18 and 35 year, have been rehabilitated and equipped with vocational skills, with about 90 percent of completely healed and currently engaged in income generating activities.
Pity today’s clothes. Like unloved toys, they’re being worn less often than ever. The rise of fast fashion retailers has meant that consumers can buy trendy clothes almost the second they’re designed – and just as quickly move on to the next fad.
Most of us try to lessen the guilt of our fashion fickleness by dropping those barely worn clothes off at a charity shop.
Oxfam says donations to its stores increased by 2% in the 2016-2017 period
In many ways it’s a virtuous cycle. But only 10% to 20% of donated clothes are actually sold through charity shops like Oxfam’s. The rest are sold to distributors who then sort the clothes and send them on to countries like Pakistan or Malaysia where they are sold in second-hand clothes markets or recycled to make products like fleece.
There’s just one problem: those countries increasingly no longer want our used clothes. Overall, the global export market for worn and used clothing is estimated to be about $4bn.
But a BBC analysis of data from the United Nations shows that the formerly fast-growing used clothing import/export business has declined over the past few years – both in terms of volume and in terms of value.
Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan and Burundi recently announced they intended to stop importing used clothes from places like the UK and the US by 2019.
Last June, Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame said: “We have to grow and establish our industries.” The consequences for clothes-selling countries were swift.
The United States – which is the world’s biggest exporter of worn clothing – said over the summer it would review its trade relationship with Rwanda, as well as Uganda and Tanzania, in the wake of the proposed bans.
In a statement, it said the bans “impos[ed] significant economic hardship on the US used clothing industry.” Whether it’s due to political bickering or simply a lack of demand, the increasingly competitive global market for worn clothing has put pressure on the UK companies that buy all of those unsold charity shop clothes.
‘Not many left’
Ross Barry’s family started and has run LMB Textile Recyclers for the past thirty years. But now, he says, there are “not that many of us left in the UK.”
Ross Barry’s family has been in the clothes recycling business for 30 years. Their factory – in east London – has massive conveyor belts with workers dotted every few feet or so, carefully inspecting all of our unwanted cast-offs into 160 different possible grades of clothing.
The grades range from barely worn to only good for insulation. Each grade is packed up into plastic sacks weighing 45kg that are then sold for anything from £5-150 to foreign buyers. Bras and football kit go for the most, Mr Barry says.
Because of cost pressures, LMB has had to reduce staff from 100 to 20 full-time workers. The sorting is quite a labour intensive process.
“There’s not a machine that will tell you that’s a grade one hoodie,” he tells me, as 10 workers sort through the latest truckload. He says that over the past five years he’s seen 60 -70 companies stop their sorting business. And LMB hasn’t been immune, he says he had to trim his staff from nearly 100 workers to some 20 today.
“Clothing is an international trade, they can buy from anywhere,” says Mr Barry, who says it’s hard to remain competitive when labour costs in the UK are quite high.
A massive conveyor belt transports half a million tons of clothes to workers each day
Part of what is hurting Mr Barry’s business is the fact that most of the clothing we buy today is increasingly being sorted into the lower “junk” category.
Things fall apart
Manufacturers know that customers are more interested in low prices than durability, because they increasingly expect to wear their clothes just a few times and throw them away.
“So the quality’s not as good, so when our customers get [an item] they’re not getting two or three hundred wears out of it – they know it’s only going to be a couple of uses,” he says.
That means, according to Fee Gilfeather, head of marketing for Oxfam’s trading division, “more [clothing] is getting incinerated than there used to be.”
The future will involve figuring out how to turn these unwanted clothes into new fabrics say industry experts which is why both Oxfam and LMB say the future of clothes recycling might be “closing the clothing loop”: figuring out a way to fully recycle these clothes into fabrics we might use.
Oxfam recently joined Marks & Spencer to manufacture a suit from the high-quality used cashmere that gets donated to its stores.
And fast fashion behemoth Hennes and Mauritz – better known as H&M – recently linked with the Hong Kong Institute of Textiles and Apparel, to fund research into how to recycle blended textiles (such as cotton-polyester mixes) into new fabrics and yarns.
Only a fraction of donated clothes are sold through charity shops – the rest get sold on to clothes recyclers or incinerated
Yet until technology can catch up with our insatiable need for ever-more fast fashion, one message Oxfam emphasises is that consumers shouldn’t stop donating simply because it is forced to burn more clothes. In fact, some of the energy from those unwanted clothing fires could end up powering homes.
So the next time you’re tempted by a new trend it might be wise to remember the words of Coco Chanel. “Elegance,” she is reported to have said, “does not necessarily consist in putting on a new dress.” src:Rwanda-Podium
