More than 80 sanitation offenders arrested in Umuahia

The clean-up exercise which usually takes place last Saturday of the month, was moved forward by one week.Mr Ejere Kalu-Igwe, who spoke with newsmen shortly after monitoring the exercise at Isi-gate, Aba road and World Bank areas of the state capital,  expressed satisfaction with the compliance level.Kalu-Igwe said that government brought the exercise forward to […]

The clean-up exercise which usually takes place last Saturday of the month, was moved forward by one week.
Mr Ejere Kalu-Igwe, who spoke with newsmen shortly after monitoring the exercise at Isi-gate, Aba road and World Bank areas of the state capital,  expressed satisfaction with the compliance level.
Kalu-Igwe said that government brought the exercise forward to ensure free movement of people during the Christmas festivities.
“The decision to hold it on Dec.21, is in line with the biblical injunction that people should prepare their ways ahead of the birth of Christ.
“It is only when your environment is clean that you can have the ministers of the gospel preach the good news to you and that is our thinking that Abia, as God’s own state, must be very clean ahead of the Christmas and New Year festivities.’’
The director decried the practice of youths football during clean-up, stressing that the government viewed such an act as a serious misconduct.
“That the road is free because no vehicular movement is recorded during clean-up does not mean that people should be playing football on these roads.
“Government has severally warned the public against this misconduct, yet the perpetrators refused to listen.
“December 2013 might be the end of the grace period for people who play football during clean-up, because government must evolve a workable measure to check this unwholesome act’’, he said.
Also speaking, Chief Okechukwu Aguwa, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Environment, urged Abia people not to litter the environment during the festive period, saying that making the place dirty could result to air-borne disease, which might endanger the lives of residents. (NAN)