The Abia State Government says Abia State Environmental Protection Agency (ASEPA) is now focusing on the next level of waste management, which will entail modern collection of waste at the point of generation, and this will come through residential areas and business premises.
The state Commissioner for Information, Prince Okey Kanu disclosed this Monday while briefing newsmen on the outcome of this week’s State Executive Council, EXCO meeting chaired by the state governor, Alex Otti, “ASEPA is also poised to run a high breed that will involve Central collection in places such as Markets and in some specific areas with high traffic, both human and vehicular and of course aterial roads, very narrow roads.
“They are also on the verge of implementing their new tariffs and rates across the state. The state government will in some way offer some assistance in this regard because waste disposal is seen as a social service, but then, citizens will, to some extent, bear some burden in terms of paying some little tariffs for waste disposal.
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“It is important to seek the assistance or support of the members of the public to help ASEPA and other agencies of government, for that matter, to monitor government assets.”
Also worried by the activities of metal scrap dealers in the state, the Commissioner said, “In this wise, they need to monitor the activities of scrap dealers who tamper with ASEPA buckets. We have instances of scrap dealers who steal or remove ASEPA buckets, so we need members of the public to take ownership of this and help in monitoring the activities of such deviants in the society.
“They also need to be weary of some criminals, some syndicate who defraud members of the public in the name of ASEPA. We are using this opportunity to encourage members of the public to report any suspected cases of people extortion to the harmonised task force and other law enforcement agencies. We have a lot of such groups in Aba, and their activities, I can assure you, are being monitored.
“The state government continues to record visible achievements in this regard. Currently, there are over 40 direct labour reconstruction and maintenance works around the state. They are all ongoing; however, recently, ten of such projects were completed, and they include the repair of Ozuitem Street, Igbere Street and patching of potholes on Udi Street, Obowu Street and Oboro Street all in Umuahia. In ABA, Cameroon road, Asa road to Eziukwu road, market road, Cemetery road phase 2 all in ABA amongst others have been completed.
“A total of 28 contract projects are ongoing. Interestingly, all the contractors are on site and it is expected that some of these roads will be completed later this month and all such of these roads will be up for commissioning by Alex Otti before the month ends.”
In continuation with the teachers’ recruiting exercise, the Commissioner said the shortlisted candidates will be invited to sit for a CBT test on the 6th and 7th of March, adding that tests will be held in two centers in each of the three senatorial zones of the state.
According to him, successful candidates who will be shortlisted, will be reached through SMS and through their enclosed email addresses and used the opportunity to reassure members of the public that the transparency of that process will be observed to the fullest and to the end of the exercise when the successful candidates who passed the test and sit for their oral interview will emerge.
Further on education, the government disclosed that the planned movement of the law facility of Abia State University from the Umuahia back to Uturu will commence soon, precisely by the end of this first semester.
The Commissioner noted, “This new session commenced today, the 3rd of March, 2025, and the semester will end about June. By the end of June, that planned movement will actually take place. The movement before now was hampered due to a lot of reasons, including logistics reasons, reasons of procedures and process.
“They had some accreditation processes to see through, NUC accreditation and that of professional body, that delayed the movement, in addition to the fact that some students had exams to take. So as a thinking government and one that listens to it’s citizens, the government needed to get through with that process and now that they’ve completed that process. The movement back to Uturu will commence unhindered.
“The University admitted currently about 6,042 fresh students into the first year. That is a 48% increase over last year’s figure of 4,196. Interestingly, the quota for law, Medicine, Pharmacy and Nursing Sciences were not exceeded,a situation that speaks to the type of governance and administrative discipline prevalent in our government institutions in Abia state.”
The Commissioner also said that free and compulsory education policy is up and running and will be implemented to the fullest across the length and breath of the state, stating that pupils in private schools and students up to Junior secondary school 3 are not supposed to pay any type of fees whatsoever, be they PTA fees, sports fees and so on.
According to him Heads of schools are being paid monthly impress with which to run their schools and as such, they don’t have any need whatsoever to charge parents fees under any guise, and advised members of the public, parents, students to report any cases of default in this regard to the appropriate authorities.
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