By Hauwa Ali
The Kaduna state government has engaged 500 youths to sweep and keep major roads clean, under the Kaduna State COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus Programme, KD-CARES, Labour-Intensive Public Works, LIPW.
Dr Umar Haira’u, acting Director, Municipal Waste Management, Kaduna Capital Territory Authority, KCTA, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Kaduna on Wednesday.
According to Haira’u, the LIPW was designed to keep the environment clean while financially empowering the youth to enable them recover from the effects of COVID-19.
He said that the main task of the youths was to sweep all major roads and pick up litter along the road and put them in sacks for evacuation by Private Service Providers, PSP.
He added that the KCTA has engaged 13 private service providers, who were contracted to manage waste collection and disposal in the state.
“Another set of youth will be recruited to desilt drainages, while others will be recruited under vegetation control to remove all vegetation cover and grasses from the major roads.
“The youths will be moving around to trim overgrown trees and grass covering the road and put them in a sack for evacuation by the PSP to the dump sites.
“To further empower the youth, KCTA has encouraged the PSP to also recruit scavengers as loaders, trash collectors or monitor and report activities at designated dump sites,” he added.
The acting director said that the KCTA has provided refuse receptacles, a metal or plastic container for the disposal of refuse, in strategic locations across the four metropolitan Local Government Areas, LGAs.
He identified the four metropolitan LGAs as Kaduna South, Kaduna North, Chikun and Igabi.