By Awaal Gata
Unlike in the city centre where the officials of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) are always on alert to enforce sanity, in the satellite towns the opposite is the case especially when it comes to the issue of sanitation.
Residents of the towns, especially far-flung ones like Gwagwalada, Zuba, Mararaba and Dei-dei, face a lot of difficulties to have their wastes disposed.
This is because most lands in the towns are developed and the owners of a few undeveloped ones wouldn’t let their plots to be turned into dump sites.
Speaking to Blueprint, Bala Isyaku, a resident of Zuba, said those who could afford pay truck pushers to help them in disposing their wastes, and those who could not dispose them in gutters, waterways or access roads at midnight.
About the gutters, Isyaku decried that in the rainy seasons, flood washes the wastes away but in the dry seasons, the gutters get filled, fouling the environment with a stench which is hazardous to human health. According to him, almost every part of Zuba is presently grappling with the problem, and all efforts to stop the residents from the act has been to no avail.
“Because there are no dump sites in Zuba, those who can afford call yan-bola to help them. Those who can’t afford dump their refuse on the road or gutters in the middle of the night because nobody should see them.
“In the rainy seasons we do not have much problem because the flood washes the dirts off the gutters. Now there is no rain the gutters are filled and they are emitting smells that are bad for human health.
“Walk through any area in Zuba you will hear the smell; and even when you try to stop people from that behaviour they wouldn’t heed,” he lamented.
Speaking further, Isyaku said the residents were not the ones at fault as far as the problem is concerned, because “as humans we must have waste as we live; it’s now left for to the authorities to tell us how to dispose them.”
He, however, called on the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to adopt the sort wastes evacuation strategy adopted in the city centre in the satellite towns.
However, in a recent interview with newsmen, the Acting Director of AEPB, Baba Shehu Lawan, said the board is working with the Satellite Town Development Authority (STDA) in adopting the system in the city centre but with necessary adjustments in terms of technology and approach.