Group storms Lagos Assembly, protests govt ceding of waste mgt to foreign firms

Association of Waste Managers of Nigeria on Thursday pleaded with the Lagos State House of Assembly to protect their investments in Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s “Cleaner Lagos Initiative.”

The new sanitation policy is part of the 251-section Environmental Management and Protection Bill, 2017, before the House of which the House held a public hearing on Thursday.

The bill which is an executive one is titled; “A Bill for a Law to Provide for the Management, Protection and Sustainable Development of the Environment in Lagos State and other Connected Purposes.”

The protesters stormed the House with placards bearing various inscriptions like: “Dear Hon. members, Lagos MOE wants to cede our services to foreign firms, Monopoly! Wetin we fit do self” and “Inequitable! 80 per cent to Oyinbo, 20 per cent to Lagosians not Acceptable.”

Others are: “If my people cannot clean their city, what can dey do? Asiwaju Tinubu said in 2006”, and “The Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly, we humbly plead with you to speak for our investment which is the bedrock of entire Lagos Activities.”

The spokesman for the over 200 protesters, Mr. Taju Ekemode, said the new policy of government which ceded 80 per cent of waste volume to foreign investors would destroy their investments.

Ekemode, the Vice Chairman of the group said: “We are here today to let the lawmakers know our plights, what we suffer and what we may suffer with the new Cleaner Lagos Planning policy by the current executive.

“We have been doing this job for years and there has been no problems. We have been cleaning Lagos and there are no problems.

“The government now plan to organise a foreign firm to come and clean Lagos, this is absurd and we cannot agree to that.

“We are not against reform in any way, but the reform should be around the current PSP, that is what we are saying.

“The policy directing us to leave the streets to allow foreign firms to takes over will kill our businesses. Where do we put those trucks? We can’t use them to carry sand.

“Those trucks cannot be used for any other things apart from wastes. What do we do with our investments? How do we repay the loan we got from banks?

“Before the bill is passed, we want the lawmakers to consider the PSP as representatives of the people.

“The governor said we should take over the commercial place, but the percentage of commercial centre in Lagos is just about 20 compared to what is being ceded to foreign investment.”

He said the operators had not failed at any time to heed different policies to make the business better, adding that this current restriction would kill their huge investments.

According to him, many of the PSP operators collected loans from banks which they are still servicing saying residents owed PSP operators so much debts.

Ekemode said the areas ceded to them would be grossly inadequate for about 350 PSP Operators in the state.