Why we are introducing Cleaner Lagos initiative -Fafunmi

Hon. Dayo Saka-Fafunmi, a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly representing Ifako Ijaiye Constituency 2 is the Acting Chairman, House Committee on the Environment; to him, the new law on the environment in Lagos State brought with it a new approach to managing waste in the metropolitan state. In this interview with PATRICK OKOHUE, Fafunmi speaks on the idea behind Cleaner Lagos and how the government plans to make the state cleaner and turn waste to wealth.

What is the Cleaner Lagos initiative all about?
It is a platform where the environmental issues of the state would be adequately addressed. Before now, solid waste which encompasses industrial, commercial and medical waste was being handled together.

What the state government wants to do is to look for experts and saddle them with the responsibility of managing waste, which had not been done well in the past.

Having saddled the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) and the Private Sector Participation (PSP) with the responsibility of clearing waste and the streets of Lagos are still dirty, the best thing was to look for tested and trusted hands in domestic waste management.

That is what Cleaner Lagos is all about. The decision is to allow the PSP to move from domestic to commercial because they are being overwhelmed when they were doing the two.

Now, the effect of the concessionaires is already being felt. They have brought some machinery that would effectively aid waste management in the state.

We don’t produce these equipments here and the process of bringing the equipments is cumbersome, and when they start working the people of Lagos would appreciate it.

For the first time, we are moving away from having dump sites to where all these wastes would be adequately processed so that it would not contaminate our water body or infect people. With this, our drainages and canals would be kept clean. The experts would be involved.

We are not the only state that is below the sea level, the whole of Amsterdam is below the sea level and they are able to turn around what is perceived to be a misfortune into something better.

Also, the industrial waste would be properly handled; there is no aspect of waste management that is left untouched. Cleaner Lagos initiative has come to ensure excellence.

Is it about waste to wealth?
If waste to wealth is about converting waste, some companies around Ikorodu turn our wastes into fertilizer, that is part of what we are talking about.

However, the process of turning waste to electricity is quite cumbersome, it has not been proven anywhere to be so effective, that is why I am not looking at that. Those are the options we are looking at.

What would the new entrant do differently in the disposal of the waste?
Disposal of waste involves picking the waste, taking them to transfer loading station, where it would be sorted, pick the actual waste and dispose them.

It is going to be different now because they are an independent company. If you go to our dump sites, you would see wastes that are not even supposed to be there.

Now, we will sort the waste and take them to the different loading stations, which we were not doing before. By the time we pick the wastes and take them to land fill sites it would be better. They would not allow it to contaminate the water bed.

So, what they want to do is to separate the waste, is that different from what others are doing?
What they would do is to separate the waste and the conversion would be done by another company. They would separate the usable waste, recyclable waste and this would be taken over by other companies that need them.

How expensive would this be to the people and will it generate income for government?
Generating income for the government depends on the people of the state. Don’t forget that we have a different approach. Currently, there are street sweepers, highway managers, LAWMA and others that are involved.

Each of us has a responsibility to play in all of these, the Lagos State Government still pays the PSPs, it might not be regular, but we pay them.

Now, we are going to attach a lot of things to our waste bill. It could be in obtaining land use charge or anything, so you must pay your waste bill.

Every human being on earth generates waste, and we must pay for our waste. It could now be a yearly payment. If you say pay as you go, some people would go and dump their waste elsewhere.

You love the way the United State of America or Britain is, they pay for everything. If the people pay, the government would make money.

It allows for individuals and companies to contribute to governance. We will have different people working, I don’t know when they would start, but all their vehicles would soon arrive the state before the end of the year.

Would the machines not keep the sweepers out of job?
We have lost a lot of sweepers to death on the highways, with this new arrangement; we will take the sweepers away from the highway and take them to the inner roads.

The more the people pay for these services, the more the government would have money and the better the job would be.

With the passage of the new Environment Law, most of the current PSP operators have stopped job and the whole state is dirty. What is the government doing about this?
What the government did was to have an intervention fund to take care of all these things. The local government chairmen are expected to ensure that the wastes in their areas are removed.

LAWMA has been told to ensure that they remove waste wherever they see them. The attitude of our people has been to frustrate the efforts of the government.

PSP would not be scrapped, they are moving from domestic to commercial, they only want to call a dog a bad name to hang it. Since they have been doing it for the past 20 years, has the city been clean. If you remove waste here now, the next day cat pushers would dump waste there.

In Britain for instance, they pay for everything, they pay for waste, they pay for water. That is why we don’t have water because nobody wants to pay for it. If they are paying for all these services we would have them. It might be epileptic initially, but it would get better later.