The need for a clean environment cannot be overemphasized.
Medical experts hold that cleanliness reduces incidents of outbreak of diseases. This fact cannot be disputed. Indeed nexus exists between a clean environment and a healthy society.
Anyone who looks around Owerri, the Imo State capital with sincerity will agree that the city and its environs have profound lapses in environmental cleanliness.
The reasons for Owerri ‘s apparent decline in terms of environmental sanitation range from dumping of refuse indiscriminately especially, when some people including road sweepers make a habit of sweeping dirt inside the drainages rather than scooping them into the bins, to lapses in evacuation of waste by agencies responsible for such, as well as poor environmental habit on the part of the citizens, among others.
The result is that the drainages eventually get blocked and discharge wastes both degradable, and non biodegradables like plastic waste on the roads and streets whenever it rains.
The blocked drainages also produce offensive odour usually oozing out of from them. There is growing suspicion that some people discharge waste from soakaway tanks into drainages.
Sadly, many roadside food vendors sit atop such dirty, blocked drainages to prepare and serve food to residents.
This is the case around areas like old Okigwe road, Item Street, Mbari, Mbonu Ojike, among others. Item Street in particular, is notorious for flooding each time it rains in Owerri because virtually all the drainages are blocked.
To tackle this challenge, there should be serious monitoring of the activities of shop owners, road sweepers, hawkers and petty traders, even residential and public buildings within the city and environs, using task forces or monitoring teams. Those found to be violating the environmental laws should be punished to serve as deterrent to others.
We urge ENTRACO to monitor the drainage system from Nigeria Prisons Service (Correctional Service) to Government House Roundabout to determine whether there is discharge of fesses from soakaway into the drainages considering the deadly odour that usually oozes from the drainage around there.
The state government should as a matter of necessity, build public toilets to reduce open defecation.
Imo State Government should equally provide more refuse bins to avoid a situation where people dump refuse on the roads or streets.
The state government can embark on another Urban Renewal programme to enable it rebuild more roads, streets and collapsed drainages that are partly responsible for the declining environmental cleanliness in Owerri.