… Commences investigation into NBC operations

From: TONY JOHN, Port Harcourt

Rivers State House of Assembly has given kudos to the Governor  Nyesom Wike,  for his commitment in developing infrastructure in the education sector.

The Assembly also commended the Commissioner of Education, Professor Kaniye Ebeku, for keying into  Governor Wike’s vision to give the education a priority.

Chairman of the House Committee on Education, Farah Dagogo, made the commendation when members of the Committee visited the ministry in discharge of their constitutional oversight function.

Responding, the state Commissioner for Education,  Ebeku, thanked the committee for the visit and outlined the achievements recorded by the ministry since the current administration came in power. .

At the end of an interactive session, the Commissioner took the Committee to Government Girls Secondary School, Rumuokwuta, which is one of the pilot schools the governor has positioned to return to full boarding status in the coming academic year.

In a related development, investigation has commenced by the  State House of Assembly Committee on Environment into the operations of the Nigerian Bottling Company to ascertain their level of compliance to environmental laws and standards.

The committee, during its recent oversight function to the company in Port Harcourt, requested that they should appear before it for scrutiny, which led to a meeting.

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Part of what they were investigating, according to the chairman of the committee, Christian Ahiakwo, was first to determine the competence of the company’s environmental consultant and “to ascertain if the person was accredited by the relevant Federal Government Agencies or Authorities”

He said:” The meeting is to look at the relevant documentations and then the next meeting will be an interface between their consultant and our own consultant where they will go together to the field to verify all that are contained in their technical monitoring report”

According to him, the investigation would further reveal whether or not the operations of the NBC have an adverse effect on the environment.

“We want to be sure that their operation does not in any way hamper the environment, we want to be sure that as they are operating, they are not compromising the standard of the environment, so that at the end of the day, we will give them their score card”.

The Committee chairman  insisted that no company would be spared in the exercise, as long as they have something to do with the environment.

On her part, Dr Celina Maduenezia Enville, a principal consultant to the NBC, assured that the company must collaborate with both the Federal and State governments because everybody wants the conservation and preservation of the environment, “particularly on the issue of green economy, on how waste is being used, recovered and recycled, especially at this time of environmental challenges in the state”.

She commended the Committee on Environment for doing a good job and maintained that the NBC would continue to make effort to comply with the environmental laws and policies of the government.

“We are trying to comply to all aspects of these laws, and to make sure that we are actually doing that.  It is for the Rivers State Government through the Ministry of Environment and the House Committee on Environment to monitor us, and that is what they have done” she averred, while assuring members of the public on the guarantee of their safety.