RSESA Boss Blames Filthiness On Culture

The Sole Administrator of the Rivers State Environmental Sanitation Authority (RSESA), Mr Ade Adeogun, has said culture remained one of the major problems militating against total compliance of Port Harcourt residents with the authority’s sanitation drive.

Adeogun who stated this while addressing journalists at a Special Sanitation Exercise last Friday, said total compliance was not realisable at the moment because most of the people were used to doing things the wrong way.

He said that was why the authority was emphasising on the cultural isuses to enable the people have a positive attitude towards keeping the environment clean.

He said the people needed to realise that compliance would take time because it was a matter of changing the cultural pattern towards sanitation matters.

The sanitation boss said that through a system of “one man talking to his neigbhours’ the cultural thing would change even as he said it would take a while for people to imbibe it.

On the possibility of stationing some officials at strategic places to monitor defaulters, Mr Adeogun explained that Port Harcourt City was large and such arrangement was capital intensive.

Also speaking on the bad state of Bishop Okoye Street in Mile 3, Diobu which has posed a major challenge to the authority, Mr Adeogun said that “I know that the road is supposed to be in the 2013 budget and expressed the hope that, the Ministry of Works was doing something about the road.

He said the road was part of the reason for the visit, adding that the authority was in collaboration with some ministries and agencies.

He expressed worry that even when the authority was living up to its responsibility by moving waste as at when due, the negative attitude of the people remained their major challenge.

He further urged residents to always bag their waste and put in any available truck or at a place where it would be easily taken away.