Indiscriminate Waste Disposal In Eleme Worry Residents
By Edith Onyinyeci, Port Harcourt
Disturbed by the hazardous effect of indiscriminate waste disposal on the health of women and children, residents of Eleme Community in Tai Local Government Area of Rivers State, are begging the state governor, Sir Siminalayi Fubara, to bring back the monthly Saturday sanitation held in the state.
The residents explained that the monthly sanitation would help restore the state back to its garden city status and ensure a safe and clean environment for everyone.
They vehemently condemned the defacing of the environment with waste dump which they said were littered on the median of major routes like Onne Junction and Akpajo environs.
Worried by the eyesore and dangers it poses, the Eleme residents lamented that the refuse has contributed to the high rate of malaria outbreak, suffered mostly by women and children in the community.
They insisted that in this 21st century the state government should know how to package and manage wastes to turn it into fortunes, adding that the waste sector was enough to generate hundreds of thousands of employments.
Speaking in an interview with Newsnowng, a resident who gave her name as Mrs. Lezina Patrick said, “I am not happy with refuse disposal in Eleme, the waste management in Eleme is so bad, there is no provision for where the dustbin or the waste will be dumped, if you go around the streets you will see refuse disposal everywhere, especially in Akpajo and at Onne Junction where refuse are dumped on the median, it’s too bad.
“Everywhere is sticking, everywhere is smelling and the mothers and children are always coming up with malaria because that is where the mosquitoes breed and everywhere is smelling.”
Lezina expressed the fear that “during this rainy season now I don’t just know what we are going to do. Everywhere is stinking. There is no permanent place to dispose of the waste and the residents too are not helping matters, they just throw it anyhow they like.”
She further appealed to the state government to “provide a place for us. If possible they can say bring out your waste at a particular time, let’s say by 6PM if you don’t bring it by that time you keep it in your houses then the following day you bring it out, because the way they are disposing of the thing is not good.
“Then I would like the government to bring back the monthly sanitation that will bring back their consciousness, every people will come out that day and clean the environment.
“When we were having that monthly sanitation everybody was conscious, you cannot go out in a particular time, you have to be there to clean your environment and you dare not and cannot just throw things anyhow, so I will want this present governor to please, our governor, we are begging you, bring back our monthly sanitation, we are not happy, it’s affecting our health.”
To ensure the compliance of residents to government directives regarding waste disposal, Lezina suggested that, “a fee should be placed as a penalty for defaulters when these measures are been put in place. You know human beings are not easy to manage and they don’t value free things, when a fine is placed on it, they will be conscious of it. If I do this, I will be asked to pay for it, so for that, they will maintain the system.”
