Lagos State House of Assembly mandates PSP group to resume refuse collection in defiance of Ambode

MEMBERS of the Lagos State House of Assembly have ordered the Private Sector Partnership (PSP) operator to resume refuse collection and disposal with immediate effect in defiance of an order by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode that it should cease operations.

Under an arrangement with the Lagos State government, PSP was responsible for collecting garbage across the state but following a disagreement, Governor Ambode halted their operations earlier this year. As a result, refuse has begun mounting up across the state and it is believed this led to widespread disaffection with Governor Ambode within his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Governor Ambode handed the contract to collect refuse to a company known as Visionscape, which appears to have struggled with the assignment. Last month, many of these disaffected APC members who had been beneficiaries of the refuse disposal scheme under PSP, voted against Governor Ambode in the APC gubernatorial primaries.

Hon Mudashiru Obasa, the speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, who gave the new  directive for PSP to resume activities  on behalf of the 39 lawmakers, said that Visionscape can no longer meet the yearnings of the state in the area of refuse collection. He ordered the clerk of the house, Azeez Sanni, to summon the commissioner for environment, Babatunde Durosinmi-Etti, to appear before it on the matter, next week.

Members of the assembly moved the motion after Hon Gbolahan Yishawu, he member representing Eti-Osa Constituency, raised a motion on heaps of refuse scattered all over the state. Hon Obasa emphasised that the Lagos State government does not know about Visionscape, reiterating that the house has since distanced itself from its existence.

He stated that the executive arm of government did not consult the house on Visionscape before it started operations. He also warned people dumping refuse at dumpsites to desist from doing so, adding that he saw a lot of refuse trucks in bad states and that some of them have been abandoned.

Hon Obasa added:  “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, Akinyemi Ashade, not to pay Visionscape again and he would return any money he paid to them after our instruction, to the coffers of the state government.

"We will go to that, when the time comes but we have to do the needful now. We are calling on the 20 local governments and 37 Local Council Development Areas 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 as we have to avoid epidemics and be proactive.”