Ogun State Government has expressed readiness to commence massive statewide enforcement of its environmental law and prosecute offenders.
This becomes necessary to achieve state government desire to have a more cleaner environment and prevent indiscriminate dumping of refuse or wastes on roadsides, medians, waterways and drainages.
Mr Ola Oresanya, Special Adviser to the Governor on Environment announced this during the state Waste Management Stakeholders Meeting with Community Development Associations (CDA’s), Central Development Councils (CDC) and Market Leaders in Abeokuta North, and South Local Government Areas respectively in Abeokuta.
Oresanya, who also is the Chief Executive Officer of the Ogun State Waste Management Authority (OGWAMA) said that many residents have complied with the ongoing waste management reforms in the state.
The reforms which mandated households, commercial and industrial outlets to patronize waste Private Sector Participants PSPs assigned to their area for collection and proper disposal of their wastes for just a token, adding that some recalcitrant individuals were still unyielding despite several moral persuasion for them to comply.
“These individuals are the ones littering our streets and public places with their wastes. They do this by dumping them at night and early in the morning, thereby defacing our environment.
“We will not allow them continue with their bad and illegal habit especially the elites among them who used their cars and vehicles to dump everywhere.
“Ogun State people are known to be clean, fashionable people. So these few recalcitrant individuals will not be allowed,” he stated.
However, on market wastes, Oresanya tasked the markets leaders on the need to keep all market surroundings clean, saying that the state government was not always happy closing down markets because of sanitations issues.
He added that aside from important roles markets played in human consumption habit, they were supposed to be tourist attractions to visitors.
In his response, Chairman of Abeokuta Local Government CDC, Mr Kazim Ajagunjeun praised the state government for its new determination to stop indiscriminate dumping of refuse in public places.
He noted that people must pay for their waste no matter how little to know the importance of sanitation.
Meanwhile at the end of the stakeholders meeting, it was agreed that there should be enforcement and restriction of movement in all the 20 local government areas of the state during the monthly environment exercise, as non restriction of movement and lack of enforcement has taken shine out of the exercise.
