How Enugu Clean Team boosts empowerment, engages 1,000 youths in ridding state of waste

The government of Enugu State through its Enugu clean team initiative is advancing the state towards a cleaner and healthier environment, as well as boosting empowerment with the recruitment of 2,000 youths to join the Project.

The project which was launched in 2018, has seen young men and women fully kitted in green overall garments, massed on both sides of the road, weeding and clearing weeds and shrubs, cleaning the gutters, and at the same time, sweeping the entire place, streets and surburbs of Enugu state.

The Coordinator of Enugu Clean Team Project, Rev. Fr. Michael Ogbu, said the initiative has been a major boost to financial empowerment among youths within Enugu State.

Ogbu told newsmen in Enugu, the state capital, on Monday, April 10, 2023, after supervision of the cleaners, that since inception of the project in May 2018, it had employed 1,000 youths in the state.

According to him, the project has remained a source of succour to numerous families in Enugu State as it engaged the services of 1,000 youths whose responsibility it was to keep the streets tidy and package the waste for evacuation.

“The project was designed to take care of two needs – to help keep the environment clean in the aspect of road cleaning, desilting of drains in the state and also a sort of empowerment to the young people of the state.

“The project was designed to take in 1,000 young persons between the ages of 18 and 35 that are under the supervision of 24 supervisors,” he said.

The coordinator revealed that the project, since its conception by Gov. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, had been making an impact in Agbani town, entire Enugu metropolis, Nsukka town and 9th Mile axis of the state.

Highlighting the impacts of the project in the past five years, Ogbu noted that aside from making the state clean, the aspect of human capital development could not be overemphasised.

He said: “The young people are mainly students and the project has assisted them in getting money to pay for their tuition fees and taking care of their little needs in school.

“By my records, we have so many undergraduates, some of whom have graduated already.

“We had about three medical students that came here because they cannot pay their fees, we recruited them and today, they are all graduates and have left the project; same with a law student from University of Nigeria Enugu Campus (UNEC) that has graduated too.”

Ogbu said the project had Upzero tolerance for subletting of the job and, every morning, the workers are in their respective workplace and to achieve this, proximity is given priority while recruiting the workers.

On the relationship of the project with the waste evacuation agency, the coordinator said “based on our job description, our work begins with gathering of the waste, bagging them and ends at keeping it at dumpsters where the evacuation team takes them out”.