RAYMOND OZOJI reports
As part of the determined efforts to end the era of households channeling waste waters from their bathrooms, toilets and kitchens straight into the gutters, the Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra ( OCHA-Brigade) has commenced full enforcement of catchment pits to eradicate the menace and save citizens from hazards of such degradation.
Speaking exclusively with this journalist in his office at Awka, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the agency, Chief Celestine Anere, made it categorically clear that henceforth OCHA-Brigade will ensure that hotels, hospitals, schools, eateries, companies, residential buildings and others have catchment pits where they would channel waste waters rather than depositing them directly into the gutters thereby endangering public health with its sight and stench.
Anere who explained that channeling waste waters directly into the gutters is now a very serious offense in Anambra State and punishable by jail term or a heavy fine, maintained that every household should dig catchment pits to enable them channel their bathroom waters, toilet waters and kitchen waters into the pits, stressing that the era of people building houses without proper channels for waste evacuations will no longer be tolerated in the state.
The agency boss said they have been making announcements since last year and now is the time for strict enforcement on all forms of environmental pollution, emphasizing that nobody would be allowed to channel wastes from their houses to gutters.
On open defecation and open urination, Anere stated that the agency has stopped it to a very large extent especially at the Head Bridge Onitsha down to Upper Iweka where such unwholesome practices have been curtailed.
According to him, government now has zero tolerance to people building structures on drainages and waterways in Anambra State. He said that Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo has directed that buildings erected on drainages should be pulled down. That it is in the interest of Ndi-Anambra to furnish the agency with information on such illegalities to prevent blockage of drainages and flooding.
He also informed that government has zero tolerance for shanties across the state and that any shanties the agency come across would be demolished. He said OCHA-Brigade has been saying it for the past six months for everyone to remove shanties from the gutters as well as all manner of Illegal structures especially on the expressways, noting that the idea of building houses or shops very close to the gutters is totally prohibited in Anambra.
Anere who emphasized that OCHA-Brigade would be very serious in enforcing environmental laws this year, equally announced that the agency would aggressively enforce desilting of gutters filled with wastes as the rains begin. He said it would be a daily enforcement because the agency wants the gutters and drainages to be free.
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