CLEAN UP EXERCISE IN MY COMMUNITY
Man is a product of his Environment and the waste generated if not properly managed has adverse effect to man. Waste needed to be properly managed from cradle to grave.
Waste in the traditional African set up are collected and disposed in the farm land and later burnt during farming period. This is why our fathers practiced “Shifting Cultivation” which was an Agricultural System by which a land is left fallow for three (3) to five (5) years as the case may be before farming on the land.
In this system of farming the waste dumped in the farm are allowed to decompose and burnt before farming.
Similarly, in the Oil rich city of Port Harcourt where I reside waste are collected from house to house, offices and factories; and they are dumped in designated dump points.
In Port Harcourt, the last Saturday of every month from 7am to 10am is mapped out as the State clean-up day. On every clean-up day, people comes out in their numbers to clean their surroundings, yards and the drainage systems and the waste generated are dumped in the designated dump points.
Furthermore, the government has task force that enforces this clean up exercise and defaulters are punished or fined.
More so, on the clean-up days, the Government waste collection/management contractor moves from one dump point/site to another to collect the waste for final disposal. The contractors collect this waste segregates them and loads it inside their truck and finally dump it to the Government approved dump site or incinerator.
The problem of waste collection in port Harcourt city has continued to generate a lot of discourse by those within and outside the government, the heart of such discourse has been the lack of sincerity on the part of the government, it is an eyesore to see what is happening today in the name of waste collection meant to achieve environmental sanitation. Improper coordination by the government agents, use of substandard equipment, dilapidated vehicles, uninformed and untrained personnel and lack of planning are characteristic features.
The contractor of any of the various companies of the city can wake up any day to start carrying refuse with dilapidated open tippers. After mounting of refuse has been packed to uncomfortable heights in the tippers, human beings will climb on top of the refuse singing and sometimes eating because the tippers are open and the refuse are packed to overfull, roads are littered with refuse with droppings from such vehicles. During such periods they cause traffic jams, run against the traffic and sometimes molest innocent citizens.
The summary is that Lagos was doing the same thing at the same time in tune with government policy. It was coordinated by the government agency as constituted at the local government level and each went about supervising and coordinating the exercise to make sure what is going on in one place corresponds with what is going on in another place, based on the state government harmonized waste collection programme.
There was no traffic jam, no garbage litters along the road and so there was no need driving against the traffic, residents came out and hand over there packaged waste. Although this cannot be said to be a perfect system, but this was a level of seriousness, sincerity and commitment on the part of the government.
In Port Harcourt city, they can wake up any day of the week and block the road! at the end, precious man-hour is wasted because refuse is to be trans-located. No officials are around to monitor what is going on because the companies are party loyalists. Sometimes some of the vehicles overfilled with refuse/ waste will break down at the middle of the road and abandoned for days.
CLEAN UP IS OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY. LETS HELP TO KEEP OUR ENVIRONMENT CLEAN.
THANK YOU FOR STOPPING BY.