Visionscape: Lagos Waste Condition to Improve by Easter

By Peter Uzoho

Environmental Waste Management company, Visionscape Saniation Solutions (VSS), has assured residents of Lagos state that the current waste situation will witness remarkable improvement by Easter this year.

Speaking in Lagos at an interactive session with journalists over the weekend, Head, Corporate Communications, Visionscape, Motunrayo Elias, said over 100 private support partners (PSP) operators have joined the company to aid speedy waste collection and disposal in the state.

 “Our plan is to service all the residential areas in the streets of Lagos state. We have a lot of black spots or illegal dump sites in the states. We want to clear all the black spots before moving into the residential areas,” she said.

Elias added: “So I say by Easter time there would definitely be a difference in the streets. I think that there is a difference as it is already. There would be a marked improvement before the end of March.”

She also noted that Visionscape was embarking on an advocacy programme at the grassroots level to help them understand the proper way of waste disposal.

Also disclosing some other progress recorded by the company, Director of Operations, Visionscape, Mr. Kiran Reddy, revealed that the company had cleared 2000 out of about 5000 illegal dumpsites (blackspots) identified in the state.

He explained that the blackspots were found during a baseline study of the state which necessitated the company’s blackspot intervention programme, noting that the programme had moved to door-to-door collection of waste across streets in the state.

“We found out approximately 5000 black spots which weighed from five tonnes to 150 tonnes and we have cleared up approximately 2000 black spots by ourselves. Enormous work has been done, not just with Visionscape vehicles. We 50 rented trucks, used pay loaders just to clean these dumpsites”, he said.

He noted that the remaining 3, 000 blackspots identified were currently being worked on, and urged residents to refrain from burning their refuse, but to bag them properly.

On his part, the Chief Operations Officer, Visionscape, Mr. Thomas Forgacs, disclosed that over 15,000 bins made up of 10,000 bins of 240 litres and 5,000 bins of 1.1 cubic litres had already been deployed across streets in the state.

He said the second and third batch of waste bins would arrive before the end of March and 20,000 galvanised bins of 1,100 litres were being expected.

According to him, four million plastic bags have been distributed to residents of Lagos state and 10 million plastic bags will be distributed before the end of the year. He said a total of 131 vehicles had already been deployed for waste management in the state.

Forgacs added: “Actually we’ve got more 131 vehicles. We’ve got some tippers, some trailers to aid the transfer of waste collected from the cities to Epe landfield. Before the end of April we’ll receive new batch of vehicles. By end of April, we’ll be getting 180 vehicles.”