The Ogun State Waste Management Authority (OGWAMA), has threatened to shut the Farmers Market and Mamu Market in Ifo and Ijebu North Local Government Areas of Ogun State, respectively, over indiscriminate waste disposal in the overall public interest.
The Managing Director of the Agency and also Special Adviser to the State Governor, Hon Farouk Akintunde, disclosed this after the evacuation of age-long waste deposits at the two markets over the weekend.
He warned the market leaders and traders to stop depositing waste illegally inside their markets, which constitutes environmental and health hazards.
“These heap of waste exposes food items sold at these markets to avoidable contamination, which could lead to possible food poisoning, which may lead to health challenges to the general public, thereby exposing residents of the state to undesirable diseases.
“Markets operate in a clean environment with proper waste management and not a haven for illegal waste deposits because it is a public place where we all buy what we consume. Exposing what we consume to waste is not acceptable and will not be tolerated under any guise whatsoever.
“The state government will therefore not fold its hands and allow few market leaders and traders to expose our food items to avoidable health problems due to their carefree attitude to waste evacuation in their markets, which in the first place ought not to be, with OGWAMA’s constant meetings with market leaders across the state government on the importance of proper waste evacuation and management,” Akintunde added.
He, therefore, warned the market leaders of the affected markets to coordinate their members for better and proper market sanitation.
Akintunde said the state government, after the evacuation of the age-long waste through OGWAMA, would not want them to go back to the old past, adding that any return to the past would lead to the closure of their markets in the overriding public interest.
