Jos – More than 50 per cent of Environmental Health Officers in Nigeria are not registered, Mr Abonyi Ojiabor, Registrar, Environmental Health Officers Registration Council of Nigeria (EHORECON), has said.
Ojiabor spoke during the Mandatory Continuous Education for Environmental Health Officers held in Jos on Wednesday.
As a result, he said the council was poised to stamp out quackery in the nation’s environmental health profession.
“Henceforth, Colleges of Health Technology which do not have the council’s accreditation and approval should desist from further recruiting innocent and unsuspecting students for pseudo-training.
“This is due to the fact that they turn out substandard manpower that cannot blend with global best practices’’, he said.
The registrar added that the council had mounted advocacy programmes to sensitise practitioners on the importance of registering and obtaining a practice licence as required by law.
“Despite this consistent awareness creation on the need for registration, a large percentage of persons out there in the field are not registered.
“Most of these persons have never updated their knowledge professionally through the council’s continuous professional development programmes.
“For instance in Plateau, only nine out of 198 registered professionals have obtained the 2014/2015 licence.
“The situation is similar in other zones of the country and this contravenes the provisions of section 16 of our enabling Act. “
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The registrar decried the lack of compliance with the extant laws by practitioners and for not submitting themselves to professional regulation.
He held that this was the bane of environmental health practice in the country.
He said the current situation would not help the public to distinguish quacks from professionals in the face of non-distinguishing characteristics of certification, registration and licensing. (NAN)
