ASEPA Seals 14 Sachet Water Coys Over Sharp Practices

Abia State Environmental Protection Agency (ASEPA) has sealed off 14 sachet water manufacturing factories in the commercial city of Aba in its current drive to rid the state of unwholesome drinking water that could expose consumers to health hazards.

General Manager of ASEPA, Dr. Cosmos Ndukwe, disclosed this Monday during an end-of-the-year get-together organised by the agency at its Umuahia office for journalists.

He also used the forum to announce plans by the agency to tackle the menace of hazardous medical waste in the state.

Ndukwe said the affected sachet water (pure water) manufacturers were neither licensed by NAFDAC nor ASEPA and were operating in unhygienic environment.

He explained that the agency chose to clamp down on the producers of poor quality sachet water at this end of the year to save Abians traveling to the hinterland for the Christmas and New Year festivities from buying water unfit for consumption.

Ndukwe said that ASEPA has visited some sachet water factories where workers were using very dirty micro-filters and water of very poor quality. “Some are producing from their toilets in their flats. Some are linking their production direct to the borehole that is not even fit for human consumption. One is being manufactured in a filling station with water only fit for fire fighting. We are not condemning all the sachet water manufacturers. Some have standard environment, well-mannered workers who put on their protective devices at work,” he said

On hazardous medical waste, Ndukwe said: “By 2010, we are going to tackle hazardous medical waste. We are producing a red sack for them. We have found out that in our dump sites these days, you see syringes, human fetus, blood and all manner of medical waste that is dumped into our receptacle buckets un-bagged and most of these waste are highly infectious. From next year, we will introduce the red bag for the highly infectious materials, the yellow bags for the less infectious materials and the black bag for domestic waste.”

He said the agency would also tackle the Aba River pollution and stop butchers from roasting slaughtered goats with tyres.