Owerri, which was adjudged the cleanest city in Nigeria under the administration of the late former Governor Sam Mbakwe, has in recent times become a shadow of its former self with heaps of garbage taking over a section of the city. Despite the squalor and stench of the refuse heaps, buying and selling were still going on along Douglas road.
Some food vendors were sighted doing brisk business at some areas along the road while nursery and primary school pupils were also seen trekking and attempting to side-step the fetid rubbish on their way to school, thus raising concern over the health implications of undue exposure of minors and adults alike to such level of pollution.
Some Owerri youths who spoke to our correspondent in barely coherent tones near the St. Paul’s Catholic Church on Douglas Road believed that the growing mountain of refuse is a deliberate punitive action of government against Owerri indigenes who own the area following the resolve of locals to resist government’s planned demolition and relocation of the now contentious Ekeukwu Owerri Market.
Dr. Philip Njemanze, the Chairman, Association of Private and General Medical Practitioners of Nigeria (APGMPN), however, decried the total collapse of sanitation structures and the threat to public health by the nonevacuation of the pile of refuse on Douglas Road, Owerri.
Commissioner for Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment, Chief Udo Aguoha, said that the refuse at Douglas Road has remained unattended to because Owerri indigenes had dragged government to court, barring it from coming to Douglas Road area or entering the Ekeukwu Owerri market over the market relocation debacle.
Njemanze, while dismissing the commissioner’s claim as untrue, noted that the suit in question, which is in the public domain, only made reference to the Ekeukwu Owerri Market, which is in contention. He noted that the suit neither made reference to sanitation work at Douglas Road nor did it prevent it.
His words: “At this level of environmental decay, Imo and Owerri, in particular, face the potent threat of cholera and Lassa Fever outbreak; for the state or ENTRACO to have left the heap of refuse at Douglas Road to pile up for about a month and putrefy to this extent, amounts to creating public health hazards that could put the entire Imo populace at risk.
Nothing whatsoever can justify this level of life-threatening negligence.”
No comments:
Post a Comment