Lagos challenges States to embrace CLI vision

Babatunde-Adejare

Dr. Babatunde Adejare, Lagos State Commissioner for Environment.

Dr. Babatunde Adejare, Lagos State Commissioner for Environment.

The Lagos State Government has challenged other states in the federation to embrace its Cleaner Lagos Initiative, CLI vision to revamp their environment.

The government shared its experience in implementing the CLI with Ondo State, saying, as a matter of policy, it was always ready to share with other states of the federation, experience garnered in managing the State.

Speaking, while receiving his Ondo State Counterpart, Mr. Funsho Esan in Alausa on Thursday, the Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment, Dr. Samuel Babatunde Adejare said that Lagos had always been a reference point in terms of proactive policies and programmes, adding that the Cleaner Lagos Initiative was not an exception as other states including Kaduna and Ondo had come to understudy the implementation of this initiative.

He said that it was in the best interest of the country when states compare notes and learn from one another.

Adejare emphasized that the implementation of the Cleaner Lagos Initiative was a clear sign that the State was capable of taking care of its environment by creating the enabling environment for private sector investment in the waste management sector.

“We have adopted the Cleaner Lagos Initiative to address the Solid Waste Management sector’s financial challenge, technology gap and increasing waste generation, influenced by population increase”, he said.

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He explained that as part of the reform in the sector, the Lagos State Government had concessioned the management of domestic waste to a renowned multinational company and recertified some of the existing PSP Operators to service the commercial sector.

According to him, the benefits of the new system included placement of about 900,000 electronically tracked waste bins across the state, the deployment of 500 new compactors, the establishment of engineered land fill sites and material recovery facilities as well as the creation of over 40,000 jobs, including 27,500 Community Sanitation Workers, who would manually sweep streets in the 377 wards of the state.

He urged the Ondo State Commissioner for Environment to consider the peculiarities of his state and strive at domesticating the Lagos State vision in the form that would best suit his state, saying that Lagos was quite different from Ondo State in some respects.

Earlier, the Ondo State Commissioner for Environment, Essan, who stated that he was in Lagos to tap into the State’s wealth of experience in waste management especially through the solid waste management reform, tagged the Cleaner Lagos Initiative, remarked that Lagos over the years had succeeded in managing waste effectively, despite its many challenges.

He stressed that his State would not hesitate to learn from Lagos State and adopt aspects of the Lagos State initiative, where possible, as this was in line with the on- going efforts to enhance regional cooperation in the South West.

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