In its efforts at bringing Lagos State to its former place in environmental sanitation concerns, the state’s new waste manager – Visionscape Sanitation Solutions – has engaged the services of former private waste managers, the Private Sector Participants (PSPs), to deepen the Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI).
This was disclosed by Motunrayo Elias, head, corporate communications department, Visionscape, at a media parley in Lagos, saying this was so because the initial brief for the company over waste management had exceeded the initial scope, and therefore it had became imperative to involve them to make the CLI scheme meaningful.
It could be recalled that the temporal downing of tools by the PSP operators when they were relived of their assignment led to the state being littered with dirt across the major streets, which they all were still struggling to clean up.
In February, the PSPs had insisted that reinstating them to their previous duties as domestic waste collectors in the state was the way out of their protracted dispute with the government.
The operators, under the aegis of Association of Waste Managers of Nigeria at a press conference in Lagos, said the government’s decision to channel their operations solely on commercial waste collection would ruin their businesses.
“Domestic waste collection forms about 80 percent of our total operations. The reason for clamouring for domestic is because commercial is just 20 percent of our operations,” Oladipo Egbeyemi, the association’s chairman, said then, saying, “Commercial waste collection will not be enough for the almost 400 of our members.”
Therefore, the engagement with Visionscape is hoped to bring succour to the over 2,000 employees of the over 400 PSPs in the state.
Elias said further that with this engagement Lagosians should expect a cleaner Lagos in April, as Visionscape and the PSPs would embark on total evacuation of waste from every nooks and crannies of the state, saying before the end of April, “Lagosians will see a marked difference in their environment.”
However, the Lagos State House of Assembly recently took out time to look into the operations of Visionscape, which raised concerns among residents that the action might affect the operations of the company.
But, at the media parley, the company assured that there was no cause for alarm over the decision of the House of Assembly, as the House was only performing it constitutional role.
The House had in a resolution invited Abimbola Umar, the state accountant-general, and three members of the state executive council to brief its ad hoc committee on issues surrounding waste management and the role of Visionscape.
Meanwhile, Dipo Wintoki, one of the panellists representing Visionscape at the media parley, said the House was only carrying out its constitutional duty and there was no cause for alarm since Visionscape had a valid contract with the state government.
Wintoki said, “The contract was done through regular and due process. The state government has an obligation to fulfil its part of the contract. The process of awarding the contract to Visionscape was not arbitrary. This will be resolved.”
The invited state officials included attorney-general and commissioner of justice, Adeniji Kazeem; commissioner for finance, Akinyemi Ashade, and commissioner for environment, Babatunde Durosinmi-Etti.
