Abuja – The Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) has enjoined its contractors to adhere to safety standards put in place to protect street cleaners from infection and road accident.
Its Director, Mr Shehu Lawan, gave the directive in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.
“Any contractor, who fails to carry out the proper kitting of their personnel, has violated the contract agreement and also the safety measures put in place to protect those individuals.
“We have mandated all our cleaning contractors to use the caution sign and those workers should also be effectively kitted with nose masks, a proper uniform, and hand gloves, so that they are protected from on-coming vehicles and also from the dust they have been sweeping on daily basis.
“We have given them a deadline to treat their workers well, because very soon we are going to start enforcing all safety measures to ensure that workers are protected while carrying out their work in a safe manner.’’
The director explained that the contractual agreement is aimed at ensuring a clean environment in the most efficient manner.
According to him, mechanical sweepers are responsible for cleaning the highways in the city centre while the manual sweepers are to clean the streets on the outskirts of the city centre on a daily basis.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
He urged the contractors to ensure that they kept the Federal Capital Territory clean in line with the official instructions by the supervisors monitoring them in the districts.
“Our officials, the contractors, and the cleaners do meet on a daily basis and we do instruct the contractors to ensure that the cleaners are equipped with those kits provided for them.
“I want to also urge all the cleaners including those that cut grasses on a daily basis to always equip themselves with the kits for their protection and safety.”
According to him, monitoring is part of the measures put in place by the board to identify contractors, who violate the contractual agreements they have signed.
“The contractors are demonstrating commitment because we ensure that our officials move around to monitor their activities and that is the reason FCT is always clean.
“Due to the constant inspections and monitoring processes our officials are doing on a daily basis, the contractors have improved their performance in keeping the environment clean.
“As you can see, there is never a time, even during this raining season, that the environment is untidy because we have improved the dump site.
“The access to dump site has been improved unlike the previous years that about 70 to 80 trucks will park waiting for the road to dry up before the waste will be discharged.
“Our dump site is properly managed. Trucks are offloading waste freely without any inconvenience.’’
Lawan, who appealed to Nigerians to keep their neighbourhoods clean, assured them that AEPB will remain committed to ensuring a clean environment at all times. (NAN)
