Protecting our environment our collective responsibility – Nwakanma, VALES coordinator

Dr. Chinegbonkpa Hope A. Nwakanma, coordinator of the Vanguard for Labour and Environmental Sustainability (VALES), has urged Nigerians to join hands in protecting our environment as quelling environmental pollution is not a responsibility of the government alone.

Dr. Nwakanma made the call while speaking to newsmen on Monday, May 1st, when members of her team embarked on an awareness in collaboration with Global Labour University (GLU), Germany and Abia State Environmental Protection Agency (ASEPA) to sensitize the public on the need to keep their environment clean, with the caption; “Effective Waste Management Begins With You”.

The exercise which corroborated the activities of the Workers’ Day celebration in the nation was to sensitize the general public within Umuahia Central Business Unit on the need to be environmentally conscious and to adopt best practices in relation to waste disposal to achieve a healthy environment.

Dr. Nwakanma encouraged the public to always bag their refuse before disposal. According to her, some refuse bags were distributed to them with illustrations.

The group advised Abians to use the government-designated refuse points as well as use standard refuse bins with covers and eschew some unhealthy practices relating to refuse disposal and dumping refuse in the gutters, dropping refuse from cars (moving or stationary), burning and sending minors to dispose of refuse, as such pollute the environment.

Dr. Nwakanma, a staff of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike (MOUAU) and also an online tutor for the Global Labour University, confirmed that the members of the group cut across people from academia, medical and health as well as environmentalists and union leaders. They were a study group and course participants of the Global Labour University in one of their online courses on Environment and Labour titled “Just and Green: Labour’s Ecological Question”.

She declared that The interest of the group in the activity was borne out of a sense of responsibility towards protecting the environment from human activities that impact negatively on the environment as well as human health.

“Our group’s interest is to ensure a clean and healthy environment and to help advance the course of protecting the environment as one of the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.

“We, therefore, urge the Abia State Government to designate equipment for prompt collection and disposal of refuse; make effective laws to ensure a clean and healthy environment” she concluded.