World Environment Day: Group canvasses regular environmental sanitation

A group, C-Circle Research, on Monday called for regular environmental sanitation to promote healthy living in communities across the country.

Group’s Principal Consultant, Dr Chimere Ohajinwa, said this at the maiden environmental Clean-up community project implementation to celebrate the World Environment Day in Abuja.

The theme of the project is: “Only One Earth”.

The project was in conjunction with the Federal Capital Administration, Abuja Environmental Protection Board and Skilled Women Initiative at the IDP-Camp in Karomajigi, Federal Capital Territory.

Ohajinwa said: “C-Circle Research is known for raising environmental consciousness for people to know the importance of keeping their environment clean.

“So, that is why we came to clean this place and create awareness on the importance of cleaning up the place.

“This is the first one we are doing; what we are going to be doing is having a periodic clean-up project like this with residents of the community.

“We have spoken with the leader of the community to ensure we do sanitation regularly; we have worked for two hours with about 60 people cleaning up this environment.

“It is a lot of achievement. We had about 12 wheelbarrows full of dirt that we were able to pick from this environment and taken to the dump site.”

Ohajinwa, a Public Health Specialist, said that the project was based on the group’s discovery of the poor condition of the environment, upon routine water and sanitation tour of the community.

Speaking at the event, Mr Oyedepo Jacob, the Chief Scientific Officer of AEPB, said that people must ensure clean environment to stay healthy.

“This is not a highbrow place and it is prone to all environmental health hazards; the drainage here is not well-constructed and litter spread everywhere.

“This can cause an outbreak of an epidemic. Recently, we had a cholera outbreak in Abuja.

“If we do not enlighten these people that are not that enlightened, we will still have an occurrence of this.

“It will be a waste of money; the peanuts they are making will be wasted on drugs and other things that can be discovered from related illness.

“We see this place as a susceptible area and that is why we should enlighten them, teach them to handle their environment, so that they can have a healthy and safe place,” Jacob said.

The AEPB official said  that clean-up should be regular to promote healthy living.

Also speaking, Mr Abbey Umar, the acting Head of Intervention, Solid Waste Management Unit of AEPB, decried lack of waste management tools at the Internally Displaced Persons camp.

Umar commended the C-Circle Research and AEPB for the exercise, saying that such would encourage the community to ensure clean environment.

“We carry out sanitation on monthly basis using a pay loader and tipper to pack waste to the proposed site, but with the C-Circle Research advocacy, we will do it weekly.

“We just entered the residence where lots of people had loads of wastes on the access road being blocked by garden waste and other municipal house waste.

“The organisation collaborated with us and there is now free flow of water in gutters here and at the same time packing of refuse, which is a very commendable job.

“God willing, we are going to continue because they do not have any plan of waste management.

“We are going to come here regularly to remove the waste generated on time,” Umar said.

The World Environment Day is usually celebrated on June 5 annually, to create awareness about threats to the environment, due to rising pollution and climate change.

C-Circle is a public interest development-based organisation that is designed to carry out environmental health research and sustainability.

(NAN)