LAWMA educates market traders on proper waste management
Abdullateef Fowewe
The Lagos Waste Management Authority has advised market traders across the state to take greater responsibility for managing the waste generated within their business environments.
The call was made during a sensitisation workshop with the theme: “Hygienic Environment, Responsibility of All” at its headquarters in Ijora-Olopa.
The workshop, which brought together over 200 representatives from various markets within the Lagos central district, was aimed at educating and encouraging traders to adopt better waste management practices to promote public health and environmental sustainability.
In a statement obtained from the agency, the Managing Director of LAWMA, Muyiwa Gbadegesin, emphasised the critical role traders must play in maintaining a clean and healthy market environment.
Gbadegesin was quoted in the statement saying, “A hygienic environment offers numerous benefits, primarily by reducing the risk of illness and infection, while also improving overall health and well-being. This includes a cleaner physical space, reduced stress and anxiety, and enhanced productivity. This gives us protection from water-borne diseases, other infections, and pollution.
“Therefore, all hands must be on deck to achieve a sustainable and healthy environment.
“It starts from our homes. We are a reflection of what we do in our various homes. I enjoin you to pay attention to the message of today’s workshop and apply it, both in your homes and your business places.”
He added that maintaining hygiene in a marketplace is very important, ”If a market is unhygienic, both the buyer and seller are at health risk. Let us all take proper responsibility for our environment.”
Gbadegesin further noted that the sensitisation workshop was premised on the THEMES Plus Agenda, where health and the environment were placed side by side, stressing that failure to maintain proper hygiene in marketplaces would have attendant negative consequences on public health and the environment.
According to him, ”A market is a place where so many people visit daily, making it a veritable place for transmitting diseases if proper sanitation is not carried out. A market should always be in a clean state.
“Therefore, market users need to take waste management in the markets seriously to avoid epidemics in society.”
Speaking further on the role of traders towards ensuring proper hygiene in the markets, the LAWMA boss highlighted that proper waste containerisation should be prioritised, through bagging and separation of waste.
He observed that ”Commingling of waste is unhygienic and improper. Waste emanating from the markets is of different types. There is food waste, animal waste, agricultural waste, recyclables and so on. All this waste should be properly bagged to avoid littering. We have held a series of meetings with the leadership of markets on the patronage of only LAWMA-assigned PSP operators. It is illegal to patronise cart pushers”.
He thereby cautioned that LAWMA personnel had been assigned to all markets across the state to ensure prompt payment for waste services, adding that it was important for markets to get bin keepers to monitor and arrest illegal waste carriers who pollute the market environment.
“On the recent closure of some markets for indiscriminate waste disposal, Gbadegesin noted that the government did not take delight in shutting down markets, urging the traders to manage waste responsibly to prevent such measures.”
