Waste Managers: Non-Payment for Services Bad for Crisis Resolution Efforts  

 Members of the Association of Waste Managers of Nigeria (AWAM), Lagos, have expressed concern that the on-going waste management dispute may not be resolved soon if their members are prevented from getting paid for services.

This association consists of waste managers who are not working with Visionscape, a waste management company signed by the Lagos State Government to clean up the state. The PSP waste operators, in a statement signed by their Chairman, Alhaji Oladipo Egbeyemi alleged that the Special Adviser to the Governor of Lagos State on Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI), Engr. Adebola Shabi, was reported to be going round the LCDAs in the state to meet with market, community and religious leaders and advising residents not to pay PSP operators’ charges for waste evacuation.

“He has been telling the people to consider PSP Operators not contracted by Visionscape as illegal, thereby branding majority of PSP Operators that refuse to sign to work under Visionscape as not recognised. By this, Engr Adebola Shabi is undermining the efforts being made by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, our Grand Patron, to find a lasting solution to the on-going waste management crisis in the State,” the waste managers said in their statement. They said, after their protest to Tinubu’s house on 27th April, 2018, as widely reported in the media, the former Governor of the state had said, among others, that he and the State APC leaders would meet with the House of Assembly and the Governor, Mr Akinwumni Ambode, to find a lasting solution to the waste management crisis and ensure that collection of both residential and commercial wastes reverts to PSP Operators.

“This was followed by a Ministerial briefing of the Ministry of Environment on Wednesday, 2nd May’ 2018, where the Government gave its word that the PSP Operators will resume the responsibility of domestic waste collection. On the contrary, recent moves and statements of the Special Adviser are inconsistent with this position and are not only creating further uncertainty and confusion that are beginning once more to erode the confidence, being restored in the State’s waste management sector, they could jeopardise the recently recorded gains,” AWAM further said in the statement, reiterating their confidence in the Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu’s intervention as they anxiously await its outcome,  They advised the government to rigorously focus its efforts on making the dumpsites safe and more accessible as it now takes up to two days of queuing for trucks to be able to dump evacuated waste at some of the three existing dumpsites.

The waste operators bemoan the damage being daily done to their trucks as they are towed out of some of the dumpsites with caterpillars and are appealing for enforcement of environmental sanitation practices, including payment of PSP waste charges to strengthen their operations.