The Sole Administrator, Rivers State Waste Management Agency, RIWAMA, Bro Felix Obuah has warned parents against sending out under-aged children and house helps to dispose off wastes at unauthorised places and outside the approved hours of 6pm to 12midnight for dumping of all refuse.
Obuah who made the charge during the second night of his unscheduled inspection tour of some parts of Port Harcourt, observed that most of the sanitation defaulters arrested during the inspection exercise were minors who are usually sent out by parents as a way of beating the Agency’s rules and regulations without being caught and prosecuted.
The RIWAMA Sole Administrator re-emphasised that henceforth, any such under-aged children or minors caught dumping wastes indiscriminately and outside the stipulated hours of 6pm to 12 midnight would be apprehended and their parents traced by the Task Force in charge of sanitation monitoring for prosecution.
Bro Obuah regretted that parents especially mothers who trade on the roads in the evenings are mainly in the habit of this ugly trend under the pretext of struggling for survival.
He reminded such parents that indiscriminate dumping of wastes is also a threat to healthy living and should desist from such unhealthy acts.
The Sole Administrator added that it became necessary to make this observation public so that nobody would claim they did not know that the use of children to flout sanitation laws was a crime, stressing that ignorance of the law would never be accepted as an excuse.
Bro Obuah reiterated for the umpteenth time that the official hours for dumping of refuse at designated receptacles remains 6pm to 12midnight.
