The Lagos State government has commended the new partner in the management of the state’s environment, Visionscape Sanitations Solution Limited, for doing a great job. The state Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, stated that the contributions of the environmental utility group in the current efforts of his administration to evolve international best practices in the management of the environment is plausible. He said the firm deserved commendation for its determination to ensure the success of the Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI).
In a television programme monitored in Lagos, Ambode said so far, over 500,000 brand new e-waste bins and compactors have been brought in by Visionscape without receiving a kobo from government, while the company is also transforming the transfer loading stations at Simpson, Oshodi and Agege.
Ambode revealed that a modern engineered sanitary landfill is currently being constructed in Epe by Visionscape, while an exercise tagged, “Operation Deep Clean” meant to be a stopgap for the full take off of the CLI is simultaneously going on across the state to evacuate waste and ensure every part of the state is clean. While justifying the rationale behind the new waste management initiative, the Governor said: “In the last two years, we have found out that Lagos generates one of the highest volumes of waste in the world. At the last count, documented waste in Lagos was estimated at 13,000 tonnes per day. Considering undocumented statistics, we can add an additional 4,000 tonnes per day to that figure.
“Now, if we want to be revolutionary, if we want to be globally competitive, if we want to deliver on the promise I made to accomplish a clean, safe and prosperous Lagos, we cannot use the same template that has been in use from the past. Cleaning Lagos and keeping the environment clean has nothing to do with environmental sanitation and putting your economic productivity at a standstill for three hours every month. That will not clean Lagos.
“Cleaning Lagos means we should give Lagosians scientifically treated landfill sites, transfer loading stations, functional dyno-bins, functional compactors, brand new materials and also be able to employ more people,” Ambode said.
FG pegs mobilisation fee for housing at 50%
The Federal Government has identified inappropriate funding as a major challenge to housing delivery in the country. The government has also raised the mobilisation fee hitherto pegged at 15 per cent to 50 per cent as the former fee was seen to be inappropriate.
Speaking on measures to reduce the housing deficits, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said laws on procurement are also some of the factors working against reduction in the housing deficits in the country.
The Minister, while speaking at the sixth meeting of the National Council on Lands, Housing and Urban Development in Abuja, opined that procurement law must be reviewed to remove what he described as unrealistic conditions without breaking the law, explaining that some requirements like pension compliance, audited account from contractors (sole entrepreneurs) were inhibiting inclusiveness in the housing sector.
According to him, “our procurement processes are also contributing to our exclusion. When I look at some requirements that people have to produce to participate in our procurement process, you will know that they may never make it.
“A greater number of our population is not as sophisticated as the western model of procurement that we forced on ourselves. There are small businesses, and we are asking them to bring pension compliance. So, we are inadvertently excluding the people we should include. You are asking a small contractor to go and bring an audited account of his sole enterprise; he won’t get it.
“I have told our staff that we must review some of these processes with our Legal Department, and see if we can relieve some of them and still comply with the law, so that people can benefit. We must change that law. It is not helping Nigeria to develop.”
“Thank God, our legislators are here. The Legal Department of the Ministry had taken up the upward review of mobilisation fee to contractors to fast-track the delivery of the national housing programme of the Federal Government.
“An economy where value of our naira has depreciated, we are asking government to pay only 15 per cent as mobilisation to a contractor, who may not have capital. We must ask ourselves what we really want. Our economy needs an injection of money to move round so that we quickly climb out of this recession. If we are now still applying the same 15 per cent of a reduced naira value, it is not going to achieve what we want,” Fashola said.
However, Chairman, Senate Committee on Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Senator Barnabas Gemade, said the 50 per cent recommended as mobilisation fee would not be granted for now because some contractors might be targeting the money, hence his committee recommended 30 per cent in the ongoing amendment process of the Procurement Act.