Kano state government, in partnership with CapeGate, a waste management company, are planning to start a project to generate 150 Megawatts of electricity in five years in the state.
Speaking to journalists in Kano on Wednesday, Bello Abba Yakasai, Group Chief Operating Officer of CapeGate said the company would soon start a project to generate 10MW of electricity in the state by next year.
According to Yakasai, the firm had planned to generate 30 MegaWatts every year in order to achieve the 150 Megawatts in the next five years, adding that “we are going to do that by burning those materials to produce gas, gas help us to turn to create steel, steel turns turbines while turbines provides electricity.”
He said to achieve the set goal it intend to establish three industries namely Transfer stations, diversification of non-usable materials into gas and into fertilizer organic.
“We are going to convert High Density Plastic, HDP, tyres into burnable oil. Low Density Plastics, LDP, will be used for recyclable purposes. From pure water leather, shopping bags and water bottles etc.
“For bio-degradable waste, we have two uses. One is the biggest that we are investing a lot of money on. We burn those materials to produce gas, gas help us to turn to create steel, steel turns turbines while turbines provides electricity.
“Our hope is that by the end of next year, we will generate 10MegaWatts of electricity from the waste in Kano. And every year after that, depending on how the typology of waste changes, we should be able to generate 30 Megawatts and so we are hoping to generate 150MegaWatts in Kano in 5 years and more than what Kano requires. We are also considering generating 2 megawatts of solar to power street lights of Kano,” he said.
Yakasai boasted that with coming of the company within last three months, it succeeded in mitigating perrenial flooding that worries the state and keeping the state clean.
“We spent about eight weeks dregding all flash points of flooding in the state. With the intervention, no major case of flooding is recorded.
“It is a known fact that Kano is the most dirtiest in the country but within a short period of time, Kano is wearing a new look.
“Tjis company is ran under Public Private Partnership, PPP and tha When we came on board, we inherited all the staffs of defunct Refuse Management and Sanitation Management Board, REMASAB, and double their salaries including the casual staffs.
The COO also disclosed that CapeGate, currently has over 2000 workforce, adding that all the staff it inherited from the defunct REMASAB have been retained and their salary and allowances are doubled by 100 percent.
“We have over 2,000 workforce. We have recruited 200 fresh graduates. We are targeting to employ over 5,000. The partnership is for 20 years,” Yakasai however stated.
