Lagos Assembly scraps Visionscape

• Orders PSP operators back to work

The Lagos State House of Assembly, on Thursday, ordered the 20 Local Governments and 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) in the state to recall the PSP operators in their areas to resume work on refuse evacuation across the state with immediate effect.
Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa, issued the directive plenary on Thursday; he further instructed the Clerk of the House, Azeez Sanni, to invite the Commissioner for the Environment, Hon. Babatunde Durosinmi-Etti, to appear before the House next week.
A member of the House, Gbolahan Yishawu, had raised a motion of Urgent Matter of Public Importance on heaps of refuse littered all over the state.
Speaker Obasa declared that the Lagos State Government does not know about Visionscape, remarking that there are three arms of government: the legislative, executive and judiciary, insisting the state government ought to have consulted the House on Visionscape before they started operation.
“We insist that we don’t know anything about Visionscape because we were not consulted before they started work.
“We once wrote the Commissioner for Finance, Hon. Akinyemi Ashade, not to pay Visionscape again and any money paid to them after our instruction would have to be returned to the State Government.
“We will go back to that, when the time comes. We have to do the needful now.
“We are calling on the 20 local governments and 37 LCDAs in the state to have meetings with the PSP operators to go back to work and they should start paying them and make the residents to start paying the operators. We have to avoid epidemics and be proactive,” Obasa declared.
The Speaker also warned those stopping people from dumping refuse at the dumpsites to desist from doing so, adding that he saw a lot of refuse trucks in a bad state and that some of them have been abandoned.
He insisted that the House ought to have approved the refuse disposal policy before Visionscape started work.
“We are inviting the Commissioner for the Environment to come and report to us within one week. The Clerk should write all the councils to do the needful and the Commissioner for the Environment to work on this and report to us in a week,” he said.
Hon. Gbolahan Yishawu had argued that there were still refuse on Lagos roads, adding that it was not like before “because some PSP are now working and the state government has bought some trucks.
“Some refuse are taken to Epe and Ikorodu but it is a bit far now as 300 instead of 800 trucks are disposing refuse now.
“We used to dump them in Olusosun but the place was gutted by fire. We can give the place to private stations.
“The sanitary land fill in Epe is not being utilised and the transfer loading stations too are not working effectively and the turnaround time of packing the refuse is not being utilised. It is not all the PSP operators that are working. May be we can recall the PSP Operators to go back to work and reopen Olusosun and the land fill sites should be operated properly,” the Lawmaker stated.