Ambode Sets up Committee to Review Agreement with Visionscape

•   Appoints Bello to evolve roadmap for waste mgt

Gboyega Akinsanmi

The Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode has constituted a high-level committee to review the environmental management policy that brought in Visionscape Sanitation Solutions Limited about three years ago.

Apart from setting up the new committee, the governor has equally appointed the Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Tunji Bello to head the committee, whose mandate principally centres on ridding the state of wastes and developing mechanism for effective waste disposal across the state.

Competent sources in the State Executive Council spoke with THISDAY yesterday on the establishment of an ad-hoc committee on environmental sanitation and waste management, which they said, had become imperative with the growing heaps of wastes across the state.

With the enactment of the Lagos State Environmental Management and Protection Law on March 1, 2017, the state government signed an agreement with Visionscape to manage residential wastes across the state while the public support participation (PSP) operators were mandated to service the commercial sector alone.

After the agreement was sealed, the Managing Director of Visionscape, Mr. John Irvine pledged that the consortium would inject a whopping sum of $50 million into the state’s waste management programme and employ 27,500 different categories of workers under the CLI.

However, with the rising public concern due to heaps of wastes on the streets, Ambode constituted the committee to review the waste management regime that brought in Visionscape.

Alongside Bello, Ambode appointed the Commissioner for Environment, Dr. Babatunde Durosinmi-Etti, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mr. Abiodun Bamgboye and General Manager of LAWMA, Mr Segun Adeniji, among others, as members of the committee.

The committee, which started operations last week, was mandated “to review agreement with Visionscape Sanitation Solutions Limited and re-organise the state’s mechanism for effective waste disposal.”

Also, the committee was also charged “to work out modalities and strategies of incorporating the PSP operators into the state’s waste management regime and realign the roles of the LAWMA and CLI for effective waste collection, disposal, management and processing in the state.”

In a telephone conversation with THISDAY, a member of the committee disclosed that the committee had started operation immediately after the governor constituted it about two weeks ago as part of strategies to realise its vision of cleaner and safer Lagos.

The source noted that the committee had been consulting all critical stakeholders in the state’s waste sectors, acknowledging that it had already held consultative meetings with the PSP operators and the management of the Visionscape, among others.

According to the source, Ambode set up the committee in the best interest of the state and work out a win-win template for all stakeholders in the waste sector.

The source added that the governor did not set up the committee to edge out Visionscape, but bring together all stakeholders for effective waste management.

Another source disclosed that Ambode appointed former Managing Director of LAWMA, Mr. Ola Oresanya to help the state design new mode of operation for the Private Sector Partnership, PSP operators.