RAYMOND OZOJI reports
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Anambra State Waste Management Authority (ASWAMA) Chief Mike Ozoemena has made it sufficiently and abundantly clear that any revenue official still collecting cash payments from citizens is a thief and should be reported to the appropriate authorities.
Ozoemena who placed it on record while interacting with journalists in his office at the old government house Awka, explained that Anambra State has since the inception of Soludo's administration digitalised the processes of revenue collections in the state.
He therefore emphasized that nobody should pay anyone cash instead they should pay through the banks and have their evidence of payments which they would present to revenue agents on enforcement drive.
He insisted that the government of Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo has continually deemphasized cash payments, stressing that it is outright stealing and people should beware of revenue scavengers demanding cash from unsuspecting citizens.
The ASWAMA boss stated that his agency would henceforth intensify waste collections and evacuations across the entire state such that emphasis would be placed on homes and offices where he described as points of wastes generation.
He therefore emphasized the dire need for citizens to see it as a compulsory civic duty for them to pay their levies because waste management , according to him, is capital intensive and money is needed to achieve a clean, healthy environment.
The ASWAMA MD maintained that citizens should always endeavour to respond proactively and voluntarily to demand notices and not wait until court granted order to seal their properties over non-payment of levies then they begin to seek late remedial actions when enforcement officers seal their properties.
Ozoemena also disclosed that moving forward, ASWAMA and Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra (OCHA-Brigade) would work more collaboratively to ensure that every household owns a wastebin inorder to reduce the amount of wastes that comes to the streets, adding that plans are underway to also reduce the number of waste dumps on the streets and other public places.
He said from next year, the state waste management authority plans to introduce a more digitalised process of monitoring and ensuring prompt waste evacuations and waste management in all the 21 Local Government Areas of the state so as to hold the council chairmen accountable wherever waste constituted public health hazards in their domains due to improper management and non-evacuation.
##
0 Comments