80 Arrested Over Violation Of Sanitation Law

The Abia State Sanitation Enforcement Agency last Saturday said it arrested no fewer than 80 people for violating sanitation rules.

The clean-up exercise, which holds on the last Saturday of the month, held on December 21 because of the yuletide.

Director, Pollution and Environmental Health, Mr Kalu Ejere-Igwe, told our correspondent shortly after monitoring the exercise at Isi-gate, Aba Road and World Bank Areas of Umuahia, that the level of compliance was impressive.

Ejere-Igwe said that government brought the exercise forward to allow for free movement of people during the last Saturday of December which would fall within the Christmas period.

He said the decision to hold it on December .21 was taken in line with the biblical injunction that people should prepare their ways ahead of the birth of Christ.

“It is only when your environment is clean that you can have the ministers of the gospel preach the good news to you. And that is our thinking that Abia as God’s own state must be very clean ahead of the Christmas and New Year festivities,’’ he said.

The Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Chief Okechukwu Aguwa, urged the people of the state not to litter the environment during the festive period.

He said a dirty environment could cause airborne disease to strive which could endanger the lives of the residents.