Ogun moves to enhance waste collection, enforce environmental laws

Conscious of the need to ensure that the state wears a better environmental look, ‎Ogun State Government says it will scale up waste collection and ensure enforcement of environmental laws in 2018.

The government said it was desirous to improve on hygiene environment, which is devoid of pollution and environmental degradation.

The Commissioner for Environment, Mr. Bolaji Oyeleye, who made this known during an interview with journalists, said the state would increase its waste collection capacity from about 40 per cent to 80 per cent in the coming months, for a cleaner environment across the state.

He said government was discussing with some private consultants to help improve waste collection, adding that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) would be issued at the end of the discussion.

‘’We are close to signing MOU with some private concerns, regarding waste collection, the plan is to scale up our collection to 80% so that we can have a cleaner environment this year,’’ the commissioner said.

He added that his ministry would continue to enforce the environmental law, especially in the areas of emission, effluent discharge, noise pollution and general sanitation, pointing out that water abstraction and regulation control launched last year, would be operational, as a task force had been established to monitor and regulate ground water usage, for commercial purposes.

He admonished companies and residents of the state to comply with the rules and regulations of the ministry’s environmental laws in order to enjoy full support of the state government in the provision of clean and hygiene environment, emphasised that “health is wealth”, saying that they need to imbibe the culture of hygiene environment.

“It is very imperative to imbibe attitudinal change by ensuring that our environment clean at all times, when we clean our environment is will usually encourage the foreign investors to come to our state to invest, we need to let our environment clean as it will provide us good health too,”‎ he added.

Oyeleye assured that the government would sustain the monthly environmental sanitation, as plans were under way to have mobile courts in the three Senatorial Districts of the State to try and prosecute any environmental offenders across the state.

Ladesope Ladeloken