The Rivers State Waste Management Agency (RIWAMA) has warned that it would not hesitate to close down hotels, restaurants and business places whose owners continue to flout environmental laws with reckless abandon.
According to the Agency, the indiscriminate dumping of wastes at the median of roads, streets and places not approved by the Agency is not only defacing the city of Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital and its environs, but continues to undermine its genuine efforts to restore the Garden City status of Port Harcourt.
Speaking at a stakeholders meeting he had with owners of hotels in five Local Government Areas covered by the activities of the Agency namely Port Harcourt City, Obio-Akpor, Ikwerre, Oyigbo and Eleme respectively at the RIWAMA head office in Port Harcourt on Thursday, the Sole Administrator of the Agency, Bro. Felix Obuah decried the attitude of hoteliers in the affected LGAs towards disposal of their wastes at not using Service Providers registered with the Agency but rather prefers to using cart pushers and open trucks who dump the wastes at the median and unapproved dump sites, stressing the resolve of the Agency to also arrest and prosecute them and all violators of the State environmental laws.
He said as if the dumping of refuse on the median of roads and at unapproved receptacles by hoteliers were not enough, they go further to channel their drains onto the roads.
Bro. Obuah said a special team has already been constituted by the Agency which will move round all hotels in these LGAs to ascertain how they dispose of their refuse and who their Service Providers are.
He declared that henceforth, any hotel whose details about its Service Provider and where its wastes are dumped are not captured in RIWAMA’s data bank, would be closed down until such information are fully furnished to the Agency.
“I have the permission of His Excellency to convene this meeting. We are covered by the law, and so don’t think you can litter up everywhere and get away with it because the law is still supreme”, he affirmed.
Bro. Obuah appealed to the hoteliers to cooperate with the Agency and do the needful so that Rivers State will become the envy of other States as the cleanest and healthiest in the country.
He emphasized that the meeting was a concerted effort by the Agency to sanitize the system by ensuring that the modus of every hotel tarries with its standard, failure of which as he put, would attract the big stick.
The RIWAMA boss, who beat his chest to express satisfaction with his efforts since assuming office as Sole Administrator, said the Agency has been rebranded and repositioned for greater service delivery.
“We had a situation in the past where residents in the State were harassed on daily basis in the name of one Sanitation Levy or the other. But today, we are not charging anybody a dime because His Excellency has provides monthly subvention to pay Service Providers”, he said.
In his speech, the Rivers State Chairman of Nigeria Hotels Association, Mr. Eugene Nwauzi assured the Agency that the directive would be conveyed to all hoteliers who were not present at the meeting.
He disclosed that hoteliers had actually been interfacing with RIWAMA and that a waste management plan has been conceptualized whose template would soon be developed and appealed they be given some time to address the issue.
Speaking in the same vein, the Secretary-General of Nigeria Hotel Association, Mr. Napoleon Koko assured the Sole Administrator that the body would sustain the partnership with the Agency and would even go beyond cart pushers and receptacles to make Rivers State the cleanest place in Africa.
