By Ozioruva Aliu

BENIN CITY – EIGHT years after it was stopped, the Edo State government on Saturday re-launched the monthly environmental sanitation that compels residents to clean up their environment from 7 to 10 am every last Saturday of the month.

To make the exercise effective, 19 mobile courts were set up to try breakers of the law; two in Oredo local government area and 17 in the remaining local government areas of the state.

Speaking to journalists after the exercise, the Deputy Governor of the state, Hon Dennis Idahosa called on young people in the state to take ownership of the new monthly exercise and make the state the leanest in the country.

According to him “I am very impressed with what I have seen, there was a high level of compliance and those that flouted the instruction were taken to the Mobile Courts, they are much and the law will take its course and going forward, there is room for improvement.

“I want to use this opportunity to thank His Excellency the Executive Governor who gave rise to this monthly sanitation and so far, Edo is clean and we are going to do better

“What we have outside Benin is that the turnout was encouraging and I want to thank the residents in the state. The exercise is fair, no party affiliation, no family sentiment attached to it, no exemption .”

A volunteer on Edo Must Be Clean who is also the Coordinator General of Edo StateCivil Society Organisations, Leftis Omobude Agho commended the exercise having visited some local government areas.

He said “Haven not had the environmental sanitation for the past eight years or more, we are starting now, it will not be easy but it was a good start from what we have seen today haven moved round about four local government areas namely Oredo, Ikpoba-Okah, Egor and some parts of Oiva, we noticed that compliance was good and we are very optimistic that things will be better by next month.”

On his part, the Managing Director of the Edo State Waste Management Board, Mr Lucky Enehita- Inegbenehi said the Board would acquire more vehicles to make evacuation of wastes faster and more effective.

He said “We are going to bring in more vehicles to evacuate more waste with more vehicles, we commend the people of Edo state for the compliance and today, we were able to activate nineteen mobile courts, two in Oredo and then 17 in the remaining 17 local government areas.”