New jobs, cleaner Lagos underway as LAGESC goes to work

As the Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI) along with the new environmental laws take root and their enforcers take position, residents are being assured of not just a cleaner environment in a city that has been, for too long, under siege by filth arising from indiscriminate waste disposal, but also new jobs.

Determined to make the new initiative succeed, the state government has come up with the Lagos Environmental Sanitation Corps (LAGESC) which is rising from the ashes of Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) with the aim of enforcing the new environmental laws and doing so in a civilized manner.

“Our top priority as we begin operation will be to ensure that environmental infractions become a thing of the past in the state”, assured Idowu Mohammed, the Executive Secretary of LAGESC, who spoke at a press conference in Lagos recently.

Mohammed assured further that LAGESC would make sure the environment was kept clean at all times in line with the mandate of Cleaner Lagos Initiative, adding that, henceforth, LAGESC would prevent market women and traders generally from displaying their wares on the road.

A  cleaner Lagos will, however, come at a price which the residents will have to pay.  A Public Utility Levy (PUL) is to be paid. This is a property-based charge applicable to all properties within the state.

Tolagbe Martins, managing director, Solid Waste Management (SWM) Solutions, a consultant to the Lagos State government, explained that PUL has come to replaced all previous waste management levies, adding that under the new dispensation, a Public Utilities Monitoring and Assurance Unit (PUMAU) has been created to coordinate PUL bill generation.

In addition to policing the highways to ensure that people do not dump refuse indiscriminately on the roads, LAGESC will also make sure that the PUL is paid by the residents. “The sanitation corps will clear the pathways and bridges and dislodge people selling on the road. They will make sure that the roads are clean and that there is no environmental infraction”, Mohammed assured.

New jobs will, however, be created. While motorized trucks will be deployed to sweep highways across the state rather than allow street sweepers to do the job, over 27,000 of the 30,000 sweepers that would be recruited would be made to sweep streets in their communities and be paid salaries above the N18,000 minimum wage.

“Under the Cleaner Lagos Initiative, 30,000 jobs will be created for sweepers. We have an agreement backed up by the state government. In the old waste management system, wastes were collected, but the disposal mechanism was the problem,” Mohammed noted.

She assured that the new corps would carry out its responsibilities with international best practice, noting that gone were the days when KAI officials conducted their affairs in less civilised manner. “We are out to serve the residents with civility and decorum. Government aims to provide and promote a cleaner and healthy environment devoid of indiscriminate dumping of refuse and drainage blockade,” she said.

Martins hinted that the aim of CLI was to create an enabling environment for investment, adding that the passage of the law enabling private sector participation in waste management has made it a reality. She also disclosed that plans were underway to concession three landfills in the state under the Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) lease agreement for a period of 25 years.