Mega filth in mega city •Why we appear inefficient —PSP operators

SHOLA ADEKOLA, AKIN ADEWAKUN, CHUKS OKPARAOCHA, TUNDE DODONDAWA and TUNDE ALAO got stakeholders talking about the return of refuse menace in Lagos. But the dialogue was more of buck-passing.

DESPITE the controversial head-count figures that place Lagos behind Kano as the most populous state, all other indices point to the former as the highest and largest in terms of nearly all human activities in the country. The amount of waste and refuse generated on a daily basis has been fingered as a major factor responsible for the huge amount of uncleared waste in the metropolis.

Lagos has been described as the largest waste-generating state in the country, as over 15,000 metric tonnes of waste is believed to be generated in the state every day.

The reason for this massive waste generation is not farfetched – with an estimated population of 22 million, Lagos is widely believed to be the most populous state in the country, and it has one of the highest rates of human activities that lead to waste generation.

Therefore, it has been suggested that the state generates waste in a capacity that its existing waste evacuation and disposal system struggles to cope with. While this assertion may hold true, there are other human factors that have made managing the huge waste being generated a total mess messing up other environmental efforts of the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode administration. With its resolve to outlaw the monthly environmental sanitation, the authorities in the state have embarked on advocacy crusade to ensure that residents place high premium on environmental hygiene. But the stark reality is that the challenges facing the Clean Lagos project is beyond getting the residents to be hygienic.

The challenge

Long before now, the state government, through the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), had gone into partnership with some waste management companies, otherwise known as Private Sector Participation (PSP). The PSP operators, whose figure could not be ascertained, are charged to go round all nooks and crannies of the state at least once weekly with their trucks of various designs to evacuate refuse to various designated incinerators/dumping sites in the city.

Nowadays, it is commonplace for Lagosians to behold heaps of refuse, contrary to the role of keeping the city clean by the PSP agents.

In some areas, it takes the PSP up to one month to evacuate refuse with flies and stench taking over everywhere. This is the menace residents of the state have been contending with of lately.

Interestingly, while many would hurriedly heap the blame on PSP operators over what they would readily term ‘dereliction’ of duty, the operators, on the other hand, believe that heaping the blame on them amounts to scratching the problems on the surface.

When asked why it takes so long for the refuse to be evacuated, some PSP operators would cite bad roads, lack of access to communities, failure of the government to pay promptly, lack of tools to work with at the dump sites and many other reasons.

One obvious thing is that the effort of making Lagos a clean city may be a tall order in view of the lack of coordination between LAWMA, the state’s representatives on the one hand and the PSP agents on the other hand.

What Lagosians experienced recently was not a comforting story to tell as residents in many parts of the state celebrated the Yuletide and the New Year with heaps of refuse around their homes and on the streets. Saturday Tribune’s findings showed that the PSP operators failed to come for evacuation of waste and Many Lagosians expressed disappointment.

Ordinarily, based on what has been established as tradition, the PSP operators were expected to evacuate the refuse once or twice in a week in areas officially designated for each of them and the residents should, in return, pay for the service, but this did not happen during the Yuletide in most parts of the city as the PSP officials reneged on this agreement.

Findings

The seeming ineffectiveness at the various refuse dumps in the metropolis has to do with the ongoing reorganisation of waste management by the state government.

Responding to the current congestion at the various major sites, especially, Olusosun and Soulous, officials confided in Saturday Tribune that the new plan embarked upon to streamline waste management was one of the causes of truck congestion at dump sites.

Besides, it was learnt that some private operators have not been effective for the past one month as a result of delay in their payment, apart from the fact that most of them are apprehensive of what the new policy would be.

“Are they going out of business? Will government accommodate them in the new scheme? These are part of worries being expressed by the operators, which is also causing slowness of activities.

“But above all, lack of fund is the real reason for the seeming ineffectiveness being currently witnessed”, said the source who pleaded for anonymity.

It would be recalled that to effectively tackle waste management and produce cleaner environment, the Lagos State government has recently introduced a new method, tagged “Cleaner Lagos Initiative”.

The new approach will alter the status quo, whereby activities of Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Private Sector Participation (PSP), Dump sites and other aspects of waste disposal and collections are being reviewed.

Highlighting the challenges in the current system, Commissioner for the Environment, Dr. Samuel Adejare, stated that regular waste collection was being hindered by a vicious cycle between clients and operators as poor collection service delivery leads to irregular and poor payments.

Besides, he said that bin placement, transfer loading stations, and other supporting infrastructure had been ignored and undue attention placed on waste collection only.

“LAWMA, in its role as regulator is overwhelmed by the responsibilities of having to coordinate the activities of 350 individual companies and still carry out its own collection services.

“The billing system is unduly complicated due to the differences and inconsistencies in charges and collection routes therefore leaving the billing system open to manipulation and fraud, with many individual operators have failed to fulfil their obligations on the trucks”, said Adejare, adding that Cleaner Lagos Initiative is concerned with addressing the existing challenges in solid waste management in the state.

The dump sites

The dump sites around Lagos have continued to cause problems for the PSP companies as they have not been properly managed. The sites which are under the management of LAWMA, according to information gathered, lacked the basic necessities such as the required number of caterpillars required to help push back the refuse to allow for fresh refuse to be dumped by the truck drivers. This, therefore, has become a major hindrance and has been responsible for the delay in the punctual evacuation of refuse around the state by most of the truck drivers who claimed they were often forced to sleep inside their trucks with refuse for days, waiting on queue for their turns to be called to dispose off their refuse before they can go back to evacuate afresh.

According to the PSP officials, who do not want to be quoted for fear of losing the contract, most of the caterpillars have broken down, just as the government have failed to replace the obsolete ones.

They maintained that the shortage of serviceable caterpillars to ease congestion and the amount of time spent by truck drivers on queue at the dump sites to dispose of refuse is a shortage to them. This, they said, occasioned the loss of many of their workers due to the inability to pay them their wages regularly.

As a result of these problems, many of the dump sites, like the ones at Igando and Motorways at Ojota, have become an eyesore.

Defaulters

Also speaking on the condition of anonymity, a PSP operator told Saturday Tribune that another reason for improper waste disposal across Lagos metropolis was that Lagosians don’t pay their bills regularly.

According to him, “commercial customers do pay their bills regularly but private or residential customers do not settle their bills promptly. We cannot continue to run the waste management scheme under PSP arrangement like in the past when the system lacked proper control.

“When most operators do not get paid, how would they manage their workforce and maintain their fleets of vehicles?” he queried.

Miss Elizabeth Adenuga, who resides in Obanikoro, stated that PSP operators didn’t frequent the area anymore, lamenting that “It takes them about two weeks to come and get our waste.

“Unlike before when they were coming every week, they wait until refuse has mounted. I was thinking that maybe they are under-staffed. Government should ensure that the quality of their service does not drop further in order to avert an epidemic or health crises in the state”.

For Mr Segun Adenusi, who resides at Folarin Street, Alimosho, the PSP operator in charge of his area have been effective. “They come to my street once a week and I think most houses also pay their bills. We don’t have any complaints here”.

Another operator, Mr Jamiu Alowonle, said the challenge was from the dump site, pointing out that evacuation trucks belonging to his company take over 48 hours to discharge their contents at the dump site.

“Our trucks may take over 48 hours to discharge their contents at the dump site. Activities at the dump site are very slow nowadays due to poor state of some machines. Although people’s attitude towards settlement of waste disposal bill is not encouraging, according to the law, we must go there and do our work while the government enforces compliance by Lagosians”, he said.

However, Ope, a worker in one of the PSP offices, located on Raji Razaki Road, Aboru, in Agbado, Oke Odo Local Council Development Area, told Saturday Tribune that such delays in evacuating refuse existed but he attributed the development to delayed payment on the part of members of the public.

“If you go around the community, you will discover that almost all the houses owe PSP. They have refused to pay for the refuse we have helped them dispose of. We need money to operate these trucks that we use in evacuating these refuse. And if we are offering these services for residents of the area and they are not paying, how do we get money for our operations? It is wrong to heap the blame on us, the PSP operators. The public, in this case, cannot be exonerated either. They default a lot and that single act has been hindering our operations and efficiency”, he lamented.

Poor infrastructure

A driver of one of the trucks at the PSP in Aboru office, Mr. Kazeem, would rather attribute the situation to lack of basic infrastructure that is necessary for the agency to effectively discharge its duties.

“For instance, most of the roads in this community are really bad. Some of them are actually impassable when it rains, a development that makes it really impossible for us to reach every nook and cranny of the community. This is a major reason why some residents of the area are reluctant to pay. I think an appeal should go to the government. If the roads are good, we will be able to effectively discharge our duties and the people will be ready to pay for our services”, he said.

However, for residents of Modupe community, off Balogun Bus Stop, in Ikeja Local Government Area, refuse disposal has never constituted an issue. “They come here regularly, twice a week, and we pay our monthly dues of N3,000”, said Lanre, a worker in the area.

Our defence –Defaulting customers

Many Lagosians who agreed that they don’t regularly pay their PSP bills, however, blamed the development on the laxity of the PSP agents who, they said, only want to collect money for a service not rendered.

To Mr Dele Ajileye, a resident at Shasha, the PSP firm in charge of the area is simply “a fraud” as it only comes around once in a month. “When we observed that they don’t come as and when due, we decided to stop paying them the monthly bill of N3,000, because we see the whole exercise as fraudulent”, he added.

Government reacts

But the Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Samuel Adejare, has continued to express the state government’s commitment to deploring better technology to solve all problems associated with waste in the state.

He stated that the government was aware of challenges before LAWMA and was addressing it with the new sanitation measure tagged the Cleaner Lagos Initiative with a projection to inject technology and resources into waste management through Public Private Partnership (PPP) in 2017 and beyond.

“Consequent upon the new initiative, LAWMA will face solely its regulatory role to bring about efficient control and monitoring of the emergent and old private players in the sector”, he said.

Dr Adejare urged Lagosians to always keep their side of the bargain by ensuring that waste were properly bagged and disposed of through LAWMA and authorised PSP operators only.

The commissioner, who is a former member of the House of Assembly, insisted that the new approach (Cleaner Lagos Initiative) would alter the status quo, whereby activities of LAWMA, Private Sector Participation (PSP), dump sites and other aspects of waste disposal and collections would be reviewed.

Highlighting the challenges in the current system, Adejare stated that regular waste collection was being hindered by a “vicious cycle between clients and operators as poor collection service delivery leads to irregular and poor payments.”

Besides, he said that bin placement, transfer loading stations, and other supporting infrastructure had been ignored and undue attention placed on waste collection only.

“LAWMA, in its role as regulator is overwhelmed by the responsibilities of having to coordinate the activities of 350 individual companies and still carry out its own collection services.

“The billing system is unduly complicated due to the differences and inconsistencies in charges and collection routes, therefore, leaving the billing system open to manipulation and fraud, while many individual operators have failed to fulfil their obligations on the trucks,” said Adejare, adding that ‘Cleaner Lagos Initiative’ was concerned with addressing the existing challenges in solid waste management in the state.

He also noted that the new initiative was capable of creating the enabling environment for the private sector to harness international best practice in this vital area of infrastructure.

According to him, the fundamental changes that would be effected include the transformation of Transfer Load Stations (TLS), to Material Recovery Facility (MRF), elimination of dumpsites, namely; Olusosun and Soulus.

Others are the plan to buy 600 new compactors to complement the existing ones that are still functioning and recertification of new private operators.

“Where we are going in Lagos is where there will not be dump sites any longer. For example, in Sweden today, there is no single dump site. It was zero dump site in Sweden while China buys waste from other countries. Israel is also coming up with new technology in waste management and Lagos cannot be an exemption.

“The new initiative is to provide opportunities for private Sector participants to benefit immensely in course of their businesses, while at the long run, waste being generated to provide energy,” he said.

Speaking also on the line of action following the cancellation of monthly sanitation exercise that has generated a lot of reactions, Adejare stated that reasons behind the cancellation include huge expenditure that were expended on monthly basis.

“Besides, Lagos is a business hub city that could not afford to be wasting time on things like environmental sanitation. What we are to do now is to introduce sanitary inspection on a ward-by-ward basis, with 25,000 officials to be employed”, he stated.