Lagos: Still on the cancelled sanitation exercise

FOR some time now, there have been different views and varied interpretations on the Lagos State government’s stand-point on environmental sanitation exercise.  While some pundits posit that the exercise, which hitherto held on the last Saturday of every month, between the hours of 7 a.m to 10 a.m has been completely cancelled according to the state’s recent policy statement, others are of the opinion that the environmental sanitation exercise was only reviewed whereas the exercise will still go on, though without compulsion, in that movement will no longer be restricted while the clean-up exercise is ongoing.

To this end, it has become imperative to use this medium to appeal to the state government on the need to use its apparatus and relevant instrumentality for information dissemination to make its policy direction on this matter very clear and explicit.

While we await that, it has equally become imperative for the public to realise that it is only natural for anything that has an advantage comes with a corresponding disadvantage.  We have been made to understand that the import of the cancellation of movement-restriction was the government’s resolve to entrench a 24-hour economy.  In the face of biting economic recession, it might be debilitating to further subject the economy to a three-hour lock down when the country is seeking for ways of economy recovery.  I agree with the government that the state’s economy should be up and reinvigorated because of the humongous loss suffered by commercial and other economic activities during the period in question.

However, care and restraint should be taken by the government in order not to make economic gains the only consideration for stoppage.  Therefore, in cancelling the environmental sanitation exercise, the state government has to look into the possibility of beefing up its subsequent sectoral allocation to health.  Apart from revenue loss to agencies such as PSP, health hazards associated with environmental challenges need not be over-emphasised now that the routine sanitation exercise has been cancelled.

Again, cancellation of sanitation in the state is a wake-up call to various local government councils to live up to the primary responsibilities of rejuvenating their Sanitary Inspectorate organs with the readiness and ability to mitigate the effect of environmental degradation, which will be the hallmark of sanitation cancellation at the state level.

• Tony Anaele,

Ijagemo, Lagos.