Have you noticed the huge pile of refuse on various streets in Lagos?
It’s now beginning to encroach onto walkways. Some streets have the Skip bins provided by the government which are overflowing. On other streets, you see an assortment of plastic bags with refuse overflowing. And the rains are coming.
Last year, Lagos had a serious case of flooding and we were all surprised. Were we really surprised considering flooding has been happening in previous years? It’s bad enough that our terrain and poor planning makes some areas more prone to flooding than others. Yet, here we are not managing waste disposal properly. Very soon, some citizens will take matters in their hands and start discarding this waste into canals and drainage systems. When the rains come, we’d be worse off than last year.
So what do we do?
We need to join our voices and start calling on the government to actively deploy more resources: people and vehicles to get the trash off our streets. Let’s use social media, radio programmes, newspaper articles, letters to relevant agencies. We need to speak up now.
This has to be done quickly before a disease outbreak. We are just one wrong refuse disposal away from a disease outbreak. Imagine contaminants from refuse mixing with the water source of a community? A whole community can be brought down with just that. We do not need something bad to happen first before we act.
Whilst we await the waste management agency, we have roles to play as citizens.
1) Collect your trash properly to make things easier for the agency
2) Do not dispose trash in gutters and canals
3) When you see people disposing trash wrongly, educate them
4) Start now. Are there black spots in your area? Send information to @cleanerlagos on Instagram and Twitter to ensure they get information to act.
A #cleanerlagos is possible. Let’s act now.
