‘Employ More Environmental Health Officers’

Environmental Health Officer, Satellite Town Development Agency of FCT, Mr Aziz Olorunnisola, has called for employment of more health officers to ensure clean environment in the country.
Olorunnisola, who spoke with newsmen in Abuja recently, said that the recruitment of more hands would further improve the performance of the agency on environmental issues.
“There are challenges as people have not been coming to this profession as Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) because by the data of EHOs, they are telling us in the whole country we don’t have up to 8,000.
“If the government can do more in terms of sanitation and environmental health officer, it will go a long way. Like in the olden days, the population was not up to 170 million as we have today.
“In those days we had more environmental health officers working in this country. We had more of them working in the states, but today, government is trying its best, but in the aspect of recruitment to the profession, more needed to be done,” he said.
He added that the new intakes would encourage sensitisation of the citizenry on good sanitation and ensure a tidy environment for all citizens.
“I was working before at Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), I was the officer in charge of the Central Business District.
“Do you know what it will take me to take my team to cover the whole area? Even though in six months you may not be able to go to a particular place.
“But if we can have more EHOs, one of their core primary assignments is to go out and educate and sensitise people, it will go a long way to change people’s habit towards the environment.”
Olorunnisola noted that the nation’s environmental health officers had some limitations but these limitations should not debar them from performing their duties.
He suggested that the EHOs should be empowered to charge environmental violators to court so as to ensure cleanliness of the environment.
“You have limitations; you have the right to charge someone to court which is the court of limited jurisdiction such as the mobile courts, magistrate courts and customary courts.
“But when the case gets to the high court level, then the intervention of a lawyer is needed even at that, we need more hands to help tackle some of these challenges.
“So we have shortage of personnel but if the government can do more in this area, it is going to help toward promoting environmental standard,’’ he said.