Lagos Assembly Orders PSP Operators Back To Work, Disowns Visionscape

The Lagos State House of Assembly on Thursday ordered the authorities in 20 Local Government Areas and 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) in the state to call the PSP operators in their areas to go back to work with immediate effect.

Speaker of the state assembly, Hon. Mudashiru Obasa, who gave this directive on behalf of the lawmakers during plenary, also ordered the Clerk of the House. Mr. Azeez Sanni, to invite the Commissioner for the Environment, Hon. Babatunde Durosinmi-Etti to appear before the House on the matter next week.

This followed an Urgent Matter of Public Importance raised by Hon. Gbolahan Yishawu on heaps of refuse scattered all over the state.

The Speaker emphasised that the Lagos State Government does not know about Visionscape declaring 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,” he said.

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 said 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.

He said: “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 turn around 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 go work and reopen Olusosun and the land fill sites should be operated properly.”