As part of efforts to restore Port Harcourt to its garden city status, the Rivers state executive council has set up a special task force chaired by Governor Nyesom Wike to clear illegal traders from major roads in Port Harcourt and its environs.
Commissioner for information and communication, Emma Okah in a statement after the executive council meeting of the state, said the decision to set up the task force chaired by Governor Wike is to demonstrate the determination of the government to weed major roads in Port Harcourt of the sanitation embarrassment and nuisance inflicted on the state and its people by the activities of illegal traders.
“You are all aware that every effort we have made as a government to maintain and sustain very clean and sanitary environment in Rivers State has been frustrated by the activities of some of this illegal traders, who have been converting major streets and roads into illegal markets without authorization from any government agency.
“From time to time, efforts are being made to remove them from those spots, but they have continued to defy orders and instructions, and at the end of the day they have chosen to return to those spots.
Emma Okah said from Thursday April 12, Governor Wike will lead members of the special task force in the first phase of its mandate to flush out illegal traders from the roads and restore normalcy.
Stressing that the exercise will be sustained until illegal traders are driven from the roads.
Okah therefore warned that traders caught by the special task force might lose their goods, suffer arrest, face prosecution and possible jail term upon conviction.
“Apart from the fact that they constitute unbearable nuisance, they litter the landscape with their trading, wears and wastage, thereby compounding the sanitary circumstances of Rivers state and Port Harcourt in particular.
“Therefore the special task force being set up today by the Rivers State Government, is to be headed by the governor of Rivers state, and so there will be no compromises”
The statement said major roads and spots to be cleared by the special task force in the first phase of the exercise include; Bishop Okoye street in diobu, Garrison, Nitel near Garrison, GRA phase 2, Old GRA, Ikwerre road, wimpey junction, Trans Amadi among others.
