Ocha-Brigade Insists Property Owners Should Undertake Environmental Impact Assessment Before Erecting Structures In Anambra

...to clampdown on erring waste contractors

BY Raymond Ozoji , Awka

The Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra (Ocha-Brigade) has stressed the dire need for property owners to carryout Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before embarking on any building project in the state.

Speaking to HEADLINE NEWS in his office in Awka, Managing Director of the agency Mr. Celestine Anere, maintained that the need for such assessments was necessary inorder to ensure that property owners conform to the laws of Anambra State in executing their building projects.

Anere who was emphatic about EIA, said it was the duty and responsibility of Ocha-Brigade to make sure that the environment does not suffer any form of pollution or degradations on account of avoidable human errors.

He said Ocha-Brigade will not tolerate unjust and unfair treatments to the environment and advised multinational corporations especially to ensure that their operations were not in contrast with the laws prohibiting inhumane attitudes towards the environment.

Anere who also disclosed that the Anambra State House of Assembly recently passed a new law allocating more powers to Ocha-Brigade to keep the state clean and healthy, noted that the agency will continue to evacuate traders from the roads and ensure proper waste disposal.

Anere stated that his agency will see to it that waste contractors don't default in waste collections coupled with ensuring that no shanties are erected on the highway from Onitsha head bridge to Amansea in Awka where the Onitsha-Enugu federal highway terminated in Anambra.

He said that apart from the Onitsha-Enugu federal highway, Ocha-Brigade will not spare shanties built on the gutters and anywhere else in the state as they constituted menace to the environment.

According to him, Christmas is approaching and Ocha-Brigade wants people to come home and meet a clean, healthy state devoid of social misfits.

He said that the agency was currently recruiting Anambra youths to rejig the agency as well as have a vibrant Ocha-Brigade for the enforcement of environmental cleanliness and healthy surroundings in the state.

He therefore reiterated that Ocha-Brigade will lias with the Anambra State Waste Management Authority (ASWAMA) and Local Government Chairmen to fix a time factor when wastes should be evacuated on a daily basis, adding that the agency will not allow any contractor to stay two days without waste disposals.

That Ocha-Brigade will henceforth set up Special Task Force to catch people who dumped wastes where they were not supposed to dump them even as the agency will also prevail on waste contractors to collect wastes and dispose them on timely basis.

Anere therefore maintained that Ocha-Brigade will not hesitate to recommend the termination of contracts of waste contractors who defaulted in their assignments of ensuring a clean, healthy environment through regular and prompt response to waste collections and disposals.

He said that Ocha-Brigade is entering a new phase and this time poised to discharge her responsibilities to the latter as government will not spend billions of naira to construct roads only for people to deface the roads with shanties and blocking drainage systems with refuse, street trading and other unwholesome activities inimical and detrimental to the environment.