Will Lagos spend the Yuletide in filthy environment?

Challenges of waste disposal in Lagos this Yuletide

16/12/16 The success of a festival is not only measured by the number of people that participated in it and the volume of eating and drinking; but also the arrangements put in place to clean up the venue of the occasion.

This may as well apply to the Christmas and New Year celebrations. What facilities are put in place by the governments of the respective states and local governments in the country to ensure that the masses do not swim in filth while celebrating the yuletide?

With Lagos State government canceling the last Saturday of the Month general sanitation exercise, and the state’s waste management agency, LAWMA said to lack the capacity to evacuate solid wastes generated in the state, concerned residents are worried that they could celebrate the yuletide in filthy environment.

With an estimated population of about 18 million people, Lagos reportedly generates 10,000 metric tons of waste daily.

The gathering of the wastes on roads and other open spaces is carried out by employed street sweepers, while the State own waste management agency, the LAWMA moves about with refuse trucks to collect them as heaped in bins and incinerators , kept at strategic locations.

Also, the state still retains its weekly sanitation exercise, when traders clean up their business environments on Thursday before opening shop later at 10 am.

Although the yuletide is always marked by mass movement of people outside the state, the volume of wastes generation remained high, because too many parties during the period , cause the littering of the physical environment with discarded take away plates, water bottles and sachets, food materials, animal blood and others. Over the years, especially when the immediate past General Manager of LAWMA, Dr. Ola Oresanya was in charge, the agency used to deploy personnel and equipment in full capacity, to ensure what was then known as “clean Christmas and New year”,. But residents allege that operations of the agency in the past few Months, have raised doubt over its competence in cleaning up the state.

For instance, while some of the refuse trucks used by the agency are believed to look rickety, residents have complained that the heaps of waste generate by them, stayed longer than necessary before they were evacuated.

Even the State Commissioner for Environment, Dr. Babatude Adejare admitted the gap in waste collection, a situation he noted warranted the overhaul of the state waste management system, in the Cleaner Lagos Initiative to begin soon.

At a briefing Dr. Adejare who promised that the administration has brought the best of waste management practice to the state, explained that when operational, generated wastes would be evacuated immediately by the private bodies who would solely be in charge, while LAWMA acts as a regulatory body.

But until the much anticipated “Cleaner Lagos Initiative” fully begins, many believe it is not going to be an easy road and this yuletide would serve as litmus test.

To this end, they appealed to respondents to be patriotic enough by keeping their surrounding clean and tidy up venues they used for partying.

That way, they hope, the environment will not only be clean, but also control the spread of diseases.

Meanwhile, the new LAWMA boss could not easily be contacted to explain his arrangement for the season. #Christmas cleaning #LAWMA #Clean Lagos #2016 Christmas