PROPERTY NEWS

The various efforts of the Lagos State Government to bequeath a beautiful and serene environment that is conducive to good living standards are becoming manifestly clearer by the day with about 30 beautification and landscaping projects in various stages across the state.

Thirteen of such projects have been completed, seven are nearing completion, while others are either ongoing or about to commence

According to the Commissioner for the Environment, Dr. Muiz Banire, the state is making encouraging progress in its efforts to free Lagos from all forms of environmental misbehaviour and degradation.

Giving the account of the stewardship of the ministry in commemoration of the third year anniversary of the Governor Babatunde Fashola administration, the commissioner said that because of its coastal nature and vulnerability to erosion, the government had continued to improve on its drainage capacity through the employment of more people and funding of various projects that would help to solve the flood problems in the metropolis.

In the last one year, he said that the ministry had employed 30 new engineers and surveyors to boost capacity in the drainage office, while 20 projects, including the construction, dredging, rehabilitation, improvement and upgrading of drainage channels to ensure a flood-free city were embarked upon.

Though he acknowledged the need to harvest sand to fill marshy areas prior to commencing developments, Banire said that it had now become expedient to regulate sand replenishment and reclamation of wetlands activities in the interest of the populace. To combat the effects of climate change, the commissioner said that the state had planted over one million trees within the last one year, and had set a target of planting additional five million in the next four years.

He said, "Trees have been scientifically proven to be very useful as the first line of defence in the fight against global warming as they absorb the carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, replenish the air with oxygen and also contribute immensely to the aesthetics of the environment. They also check erosion and stem the tide of wind storm by serving as wind breakers.

"As we all know, it is now unlawful to fell trees in Lagos without written approval from the Ministry of the Environment.

You will also recall that the ministry also moved to protect the existing ones from indiscriminate felling. To this extent, the government conducted a tree tagging enumeration and identification exercise, which included trees in Ikeja GRA, Apapa and Ikoyi."

He said that the exercise resulted in the counting and tagging of about 3,558 trees with botanical and local names and their usefulness for aesthetics and medicinal purposes. The commissioner said that the ministry had embarked on wide scale public awareness and sensitisation programmes to educate the citizenry on the dangers of climate change as well as mitigation and adaptive measures.

Some of the programmes, according to him, include school advocacy programme designed to reach out to students of primary and post primary institutions in Lagos State to educate them on the issue of climate change and environmental management and climate change clubs to bring the younger generation into the picture of the threat facing the world from global warming and climate change.

He said the Lagos Waste Management Authority had implemented laudable development projects and was in the vanguard of entrenching best practices and modern technologies in solid waste management alongside improving the capacity of its work force.

Some of the projects executed by the authority in the last one year include the construction of road camps to support the street sweeping initiative; procurement of new low-emission refuse collection vehicles, compactors and trucks; construction of Transfer Loading Stations; procurement of Tana compactors to compact waste; construction of access road from Cargo Vision to Owena Bus Stop, Ojota, to enhance access of operational trucks in and out of the Olushosun dump site.