Lagos State Reforms Waste Management; Overhauls PSP Operations
Written by Smooth FM on September 2, 2019
Lagos state government is to inject 200 new trucks into waste management. And as part of the reforms, the Private Sector Participants (PSP) Waste operators are being recapitalized.
Assistant Director, Public Affairs, Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Mrs. Folashade Kadiri, said “the decision of the governor is to inject the 200 trucks to ensure that people can have the equipment because if you don’t have the equipment to work in waste management, you can’t do much,”
Mrs. Kadiri stressed that the new move followed the previous policy initiated by the Babatunde Fashola-led- administration, which proposed 20 transfer loading stations in all the 20 local councils to serve every council across the state but was discarded by the immediate past administration.
According to Mrs. Kadiri, the essence of siting the transfer loading stations in those areas is to ensure we have a quicker turn around time because once refuse is picked in a particular local government, the transfer loading station will serve as a stopping gap till when those refuse can be dumped.
She stressed that the present administration is trying to “mop up the policy summersault that we had in the last four years.”
“The policy of waste management still remains, the only thing that changed during Visionscape driven Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI) was asking people not to pay for refuse, and asking people to bring refuse to outside.”
“These were things when Fashola was there that has been conquered. We don’t allow people to bring their refuse outside again. What we did was to encourage everybody to have a cover receptacle in their house and also showed them the culture of bagging of waste so that when PSP operators come, they can really pick them.
“But when you asked people to bring their refuse outside and you are asking them not to pay and this new government is asking people to pay. People are slightly confused.
“But we are telling them that waste management is not a social service, people need to pay for their refuse and for PSP operators, who have not worked for four years, most of them are just recapitalizing coming on board.
“Gradually we are stepping up our public advocacy, enlightenment so that people can go back to their old ways of bagging their refuse and also for them to have containers.
“All those containers, majority of the women are now using it to fetch water instead of using it to bag their waste , it is like taking us back to 10 years when we started”, she added.
On the Management of dumpsite, Olusosun, Mrs. Kadiri said the PSP operators’ vehicles are not being parked for a long time and not much are breaking down.
The long queues are not being seen at the landfill sites, because of the August break that reduces the tariff, since it affects waste management, majority of the landfill is in good order.
She, however, could not say whether the landfill could be closed down or for another use following fears of environmental concerns.
