NEED FOR SANITARY WASTE MANAGEMENT IN RIVERS STATE:

Adequate and efficient Waste management is very vital to any society that really wants to live healthy and also achieve optimum longevity. As such it's very imperative for every government to prioritize efficient waste management. It's very unwise to politicize waste management.

It's very unfortunate and also sad that waste management is contracted to unlicensed and I'll equipped contractors whose main aim is to make money, and very less of creating sound healthy environment in the course of evacuation of the waste.

Whenever I see the working conditions of those innocent young men working for refuse contractors in Port Harcourt and its environs, I feel so sorry for them especially the way they work without any effective safety gears. Most of them even eat bread and other snacks right in the middle of the pile of refuse they work on.

It's grossly unfair that these category of workers do not have access to regular medical checks as should be, due to the health hazard they are subjected to daily.

Therefore, its very imperative that the government should enable Environmental Health Officers to routinely monitor and evaluate the working environment/conditions of refuse worker:

1.  All refuse contractors must be made to undergo regular medical checks at least every three (3) months (ie quarterly). They must immediately provide clinical retainership with accredited hospitals (be it government or private) to manage any major health challenge(s) that may arise from their work environment.

2. The waste management authority must provide a standard clinic with qualified medical/health professionals and well equipped ambulance  attached, in their facility as was the case in the past.

3. Qualified Environmental Health Officers should be empowered with full authority and attached to every refuse contracting company. The said Environmental Health Officers should be made to have authority to sanction the refuse management companies especially to prevent public health violations on the part waste management companies. It should be made in such a manner that only CLEARED waste management companies should be paid or contract renewed.

4. Sanitary Waste collection points and final disposal sites should be sourced and re-established on the recommendations of the supervising  Environmental Health Officers.

5. The government should procure equipments such as payloaders, bulldozers, refuse trucks, landfill compactors etc to enable effective and efficient support for waste management in the state.

6. All hospitals, clinics and health management organisations (HMOs) must be made to forward their waste management plan to the Waste management Agency quarterly through the supervising Environmental Health Officer and no hospital, clinics, Health Management Organisation (HMO) should be allowed to dispose of their wastes (especially the medical wastes) without the direct supervision of the Environmental Health Officer assigned with that responsibility.

7. With current awareness due to civilization and globalisation, it is now public knowledge that the current unprofessional method of waste collection via open dumping on the ground and allowing such to accumulate by road sides, junctions and median of major roads is unhealthy, unhygienic, insanitary and anti-public health. This method is pre-colonial and must be discontinued to protect the environment and prevent diseases.

8. The Rivers State Waste management (RIWAMA) Law strictly prescribes INTEGRATED WASTE MANAGEMENT which has to do with proper waste separation from generation to final disposal/treatment sites. It's then worrisome why RIWAMA can not respect and obey it's own enabling law. Instead RIWAMA encourages the public to dump and accumulate all their waste by roadsides thereby defeating the real aims of INTEGRATED WASTE MANAGEMENT as enshrined in the RIWAMA LAW of 2014. Friends of the Environment must rise up collectively to stop this public health menace as it also deface the esthetics of the city. 

9. The state, through RIWAMA, must as a matter of urgency provide relevant and adequate waste collection facilities that would encourage and enforce waste separation from the point of generation, collection to the final disposal / treatment. There should be properly labelled collection bins at all collection points across the city of Port Harcourt and its environs.

Also, specialised waste management companies should be contracted. Some should specialise only on papers and paper products, others plastics and plastic products. Whilst some would be licensed to specialise only on metals, some others should be for glasses; and yet others should be for household refuse etc, all to encourage recycling of wastes where possible. The practice of jumbling up all wastes together and given to a specific wastes contractor is not only uncivilised, pre-colonial, insanitary but also anti-public Health and should be discontinued for the sake of of posterity.

10. There must be clear-cut implementation of environmental health regulations to the extent that all final disposal sites should be very far away from residential settlements and other business places /offices.

• There should be adequate security and perimeter fencing ant final disposal sites to discourage scavenging, unauthorised disposal of dead animals and even human remains, and also incessant burning of the waste which results in smoke etc...

• The final disposal sites should be regularly disinfested via the proper application of integrated pest management method; fumigation and deratization, including other effective and efficient pest and vermin control methods. This is not a matter of choice,  but in line with international standard operating protocols (SOP)

• Refuse collection trucks must be washed clean daily and should not be over filled to the the point of littering the streets with refuse as they move.

• Adequate and functional fire  extinguishers should be provided at all final disposal sites to arrest sudden fires before it gets out of control. RIWAMA. In the same vein, RIWAMA must enter into an understanding to ensure quick response to manage fires at final disposal sites.