Plateau Environmental Agency Warns Against Indiscriminate Dumping Of Waste In Jos-Bukuru Metropolis
Yakubu Busari
The Acting General Manager of Plateau Environmental Protection & Sanitation Agency (PEPSA) ,Mr Gabriel Bako Nshem has warned the general public against indiscriminate dumping of waste in Jos /Bukuru metropolis to avoid the problem of contacting diseases capable of affecting lives.
Nshem stated this during an exclusive interview held at the state secretariat on Thursday in Jos, saying PEPSA is saddled with the responsibility of managing waste products within Jos /Bukuru as stipulated by law which is capital intensive in nature.
According to him, if your manage waste you need a lot of funding to make sure of the standard and the state government under the leadership of Governor Simon Lalong graciously approved funds to enable the agency to go around the major streets of communities to make sure the clean and clear the waste within Jos /Bukuru metropolis and the due problem of fueling most vehicles we now decided to engage the work of private waste disposal to help which we swing into action to see people who came with the requirement.
He explained further that the state government set up a committee of about 14 companies to manage and that waste operators were divided into two groups to various communities within Jos /Bukuru but to our dismay after their screening and accepted to be operators we now discover that most of them don’t have the necessary requirement that is going to be used for managing then we had understood that the state was experiencing serious challenges of waste disposal within Jos /Bukuru.
Gabriel Bako stressed that in some states they are expected to be charging them for the dumping of waste close to their businesses but the Plateau state government is not asking people to pay and we went into research about the operators not showing themselves at the premises of the shop owners but at the end of the month they’re coming for payment so the Lalong government decided to ban the operators in the state from functioning.
However, the state government intervened by asking PEPSA to come in and commence cleaning within city
He lamented that the attitude of indiscriminate dumping of waste had also become a thing of concern where some people are trying to thwart the state government effort and the agency on waste disposal by evacuating it within the city.
Gabriel Bako emphasized that the people will be watching you once you clear the waste after you come back, they will immediately dump it again and you will discover that the people will look at it as if PEPSA is not doing anything about its function but it is people that are trying to thwart their efforts.
He stressed that recently they discover that there is some constraint in the agency through funding where we realized in time that paralysis of the activities of the agency is why waste is littered around the major corners within the city.
According to him, PEPSA quickly called the attention of the commissioner and explains it to him which then switched into action by presenting the plight to the state governor and taking upon to providing funds for the evaluation of waste within the state and the Governor set up a committee to monitor the evaluation of waste within the city.
He said, as the general manager I’m a member of the committee, and the term of reference them was to clean Jos /Bukuru completely out of a dirty environment.
Gabriel Bako added that the defaulters too will be prosecuted immediately and PEPSA will be handed some of the funds for daily activities of evacuation to clean the state capital of waste and environmental pollution that is what the assignment.
He noted that the challenges of the committee are trying to sensitize people to the need to clean Jos where the state is using her resources to evacuate waste disposal free of charge warning against indiscriminate dumping of waste.
