Sanitation: Group advocates creation of local environment taskforce

A non-governmental organisation under the auspices of Metro Environmental Cleaning Awareness Initiative has called on Kaduna State government to set up local area environment taskforce to ensure sanitation and up-keep of their areas.

The chairman of the initiative, Jibril Suleiman in an interview lamented that refuse disposal points were lacking in some major suburbs within the metropolis, making residents of such areas to dispose their refuse indiscriminately.

“Some of these areas usually are in the habit of disposing their refuse in uncompleted buildings regardless of where such buildings are located. Most of the time, such uncompleted buildings are located in residential areas, thereby exposing nearby residents to risk of contacting infectious diseases while rodents and reptiles use such places as their abode,” he said. 

He also advised government to provide adequate refuse dumps where residents can dispose their wastes. Speaking further, the initiative decried the haphazard activities of traders around the state, saying, “Their surroundings are usually dirty with all sorts of used packaged materials because most of the consumers indiscriminately dump waste products on the ground after use. 

“These practices if not checked are capable of creating environmental and health challenges.”

 He therefore called on the relevant authorities enforcing environmental sanitation laws to take the necessary steps to curtail such potentially harmful practices.