The Sole Administrator, Rivers State Environmental Sanitation Authority, (RSESA) Mr Ade Adeogun has called on staff of the agency to look beyond the civil service mentality in the discharge of their duties.

Adeogun who was addressing staff at a seminar presentation on the theme: Sanitation, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow organised recently in Port Harcourt to mark the end of year activities of the agency said staff should rather strive to be seen as service providers.

He said the main objective of the authority was to operate as  a business unit which every staff was expected to key into.

He emphasised that the agency was supposed to be business oriented where waste evacuated would be paid for.

The sanitation boss said in terms of waste management, the waste to be paid for after evacuation was determined by the quantity and composition.

“Waste evacuated will be paid for according to the quantity. “Volume and characteristics of waste should be taken into consideration to ensure proper value to be paid for”, he said.

He revealed that between January and November 2013, 39,000 tons of waste was managed by the authority.

On the area of public awareness he said, one of the best approaches was neighbour to neighbour method.

He said if your neighbour was disposing their waste improperly, we owe it a duty to call their attention to the anomaly.

Answering a question on the need for the fumigation of dumpsites to counter the likelihood of the outbreak of epidemic, Adeogun said the process was capital intensive.

He explained that since deodorisation and fumigation was expensive the use of compressors would be more manageable.

On the proper maintenance of vehicles and other equipments, he said the authority believed in training staff to enable them specialise.

He said it was not proper for one person to claim to be able to repair a wide range of different brands of equipment as it was counter-productive.

Oil spill impacted site in Ikarama community, Yenagoa LGA, Bayelsa State awaiting clean up.