Striking AEPB workers threaten to shut down Abuja’s cemeteries
An environmental health crisis may be brewing in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as the striking environmental workers with the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) on Thursday threatened to shut down all public cemeteries in the city. This came after the Gudu cemetery was locked up on Wednesday, but the workers were prevailed upon to […]
An environmental health crisis may be brewing in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as the striking environmental workers with the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) on Thursday threatened to shut down all public cemeteries in the city.
This came after the Gudu cemetery was locked up on Wednesday, but the workers were prevailed upon to reopen the place by both the administration and the Presidency.
The striking workers had two days ago demonstrated and subsequently embarked on indefinite strike action over the failure of the FCT Administration to implement a new salary structure for them.
Comrade Muktar Bala, chairman of the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service Technical and Recreational Services Employees (AUPCTRE) in AEPB, said the unions agreed to reopen the cemeteries but will shut them again, including all other operational systems of the board.
Bala, who expressed worry over the attitude of the administration towards the welfare of members of the union, said they were exposed to many health hazards from handling the burials of abandoned corpses, yet the government didn’t appreciate their efforts.
According to him, the reopening of the cemeteries was temporary, due to the agreement reached between the administration and its national body, but that they would be shut down again, should there be failure on the part of government.
He said: “As the chairman of one of the unions in AEPB, I can assure you that it is a collective decision by the whole union, with backing from the national union.
“People think it is only waste management that we do. They don’t know that even unclaimed corpses in hospitals are taken care of by us.
“These dead bodies that have overstayed in the hospital, for 3 to 4 years, we take care of them, without knowing what killed them.
“Hospitals come to us when they want mass burial for such dead bodies. If there are unclaimed or unknown corpses either on the roads or elsewhere, the police will write reports and bring them to us for burial.
“All these hazards, people don’t look at them that we are doing anything. We want to tell the administration that we do these apart from managing solid waste.
“Based on the decision taken yesterday night by the joint unions of AEPB, we have agreed to open the cemetery by 9am Thursday due to calls from the Presidency. However, if the agreement is not met, we will not only shut down the cemeteries, but also all our systems and operations.”