Francesca Odimgbe
To deal with indiscriminate waste dumping in the metropolis, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has pronounced a state of emergency in management of waste in the state.
Sanwo-Olu in company of his deputy, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat and top government officials made the declaration when he paid an official visit to one of the dump sites for disposal of waste in the state located at Olusosun, Ojota area of the state.
He said, “We have seen the pressure of the turnaround of waste collection in different parts of the city. We have seen a challenge of people throwing waste indiscriminately in different parts of the city.
“We have set up some process of ensuring that we can do sanitation on a monthly basis, which started about four months ago. We’ve also pushed a lot of advocacy on waste management, waste treatment from residents.
“That itself also has not been effectively coordinated. So we’re here for ourselves to see what is the problem, what is happening, and for us to clearly be able to declare what we will call a small state of emergency, just so that we can get out of this very unpleasant situation,” he said.
Sanwo-Olu explained that the state government also has a plan with her development partner to build what can be called a transfer loading station in Olusosun, saying “It will be a 2,400 metric ton transfer loading station here, where they will be receiving compacted waste, which will eventually be taken to a material recovery site.
“We’re building concurrently, as we speak, two transfer loading stations of the same size, about 2,400, which means that they should be able to receive about 500 trucks per day at two different locations: here and the second one at Solu 3, which is in Alimosho.
“Those two transfer loading stations will now be transferring compacted waste to two material recovery sites that we’re building. We’re building one at Oke Osho in Epe, and the other one is in Erikitte in Badagry. So the plan is with the transfer loading stations, waste will be compacted and eventually will now be taken to a material recovery site, where waste will be further sorted and further broken into other uses.
‘’So this is like a medium to long-term plan in which we believe all of these things will be happening, be ready by the second quarter next year into the first quarter.”
He added by saying, ” but let’s push back and find out what exactly we’re also doing today. Apart from this site that you can see that they’ve done a lot of excavation, they’ve done a lot of stabilization to be able to build the transfer loading station.
“What we have also done is to look at how we ensure today that a place like Olusosun can receive, from what it currently receives is about 250 to 350 trucks, to see how we can quickly ramp it up to receiving about 350 to 450 trucks. And that can happen if we can increase the tipping points, which currently is about two or three, to about four, you know, five. Which, after this conversation, we’ll also see it started. So that we can have a lot more turnaround here.
Not only here, also at Solu. Solu currently has a challenge where we need to open up the road so that it will continue to receive waste. We believe that the road grading for receiving waste will be in another two or three weeks because the road stabilization needs to happen from this weekend and the job will be completed hopefully in two to three weeks.” Sanwo-Olu said.