Talk of expertise and experience they are the two qualities that cannot be underestimated nor overemphasized .
And whenever the person of these two said qualities is being put in a position of power, role and responsibility ; one needs to accord such person his or her due respect and aside what the etiquette or savoir-fair demands; it is better to give such person his/her due respect, provided one is serious or objective and purposeful to achieve the best from the office that person of experience and expertise is being put, as a part of the mechanism or major technocrat bearing the central responsibility , to see things work or running of the managerial functions.
Accordingly, this was the perspective by which I saw things in respect of the assignment I have at hand to visit Oyo Waste Management Authority;(OYOWMA)/West African Energy; (WAE) in order to be abreast of the state of environmental sanitation in Oyo State especially within Ibadan and environs. And premised by two instances on this subject-matter that prompted my inquisitiveness to get close to the Waste Management Office in order to get facts (not fallacy) from the right source (best quarter).
Suffice I relay first instance where I saw the team of male and female environmental/ Sanitary Officers along Oritamerin; the popular market, where the officers were on their normal routine and strictly but amicably I saw the team-leader (name withheld) where he was dishing out instructions to his junior officers to actualize his order, as a deterrence to educate and admonish the market women on the danger behind leaving their environment dirty and seeing any area where they had not complied they ordered the market women to close-up their shops, to do momentarily the sanitation-chore, that ought to have been done before.
And as an onlooker; standing by to watch the whole show, I was equivocally impressed to know there are many people that want to be handled disciplinarily and strictly to cultivate a habit beneficial to his/her or even the majority, and this is what I saw as an irony of life; where many are expected to be forced to live a life of cleanliness.
Secondly was the day I saw many downtrodden running after a truck belonging to OYOWMA /WAE with bags and sacks of refuse scrambling to drop them into the moving truck of the mechanized incinerator yet unruly abusing the West African Energy(WAE)/ Oyo Waste Management Authority (OYOWMA) officers to do their job as expected at-least, they have been paid for it, here I realized proper enlightenment should be put in to educate the members of the public, to know that all what the government and the 'PSP' are doing is to maintain a healthy environment, for the good of all and sundry, so with these instances I was prompted to visit Waste Management Board office located opposite the Gate Police Station in Ibadan while on the first day; 11th of January, 2017 I was reschedule to come back next day 12th of January, 2017 but due to the exigency of my job and the work-load on me which took me out of Ibadan I needed to come back on the 13th of January, 2017, here I followed all due procedure before being allowed to see the Chief Executive Officer of West African Energy in person of an amiable white-man, attentive, accommodating, frank, time-conscious, cool, calm, calculative, coherent, concise and simple Mr. Paul Callaghan, who was positively and considerably disposed to me in my introduction as a journalist from my medium, on the beat to fact-find what state WAE/OYOWMA is in the management of environment activities, and the state of sanitation- health, the experience expatriate, highly committed to the piece of job assigned to him under OYOWMA to do as justifiably as a specialist and designated, and promptly he welcomed me into his office where we were engaged in a rich, clear and contextual discussion, while he bared out his mind in educating thus that since West African Energy started activities (May 2016) under OYOWMA the job has been challenging where part of their department collect garbage as planned regarding allocation and designation, and in the course of enlightening people they (the public) erroneously and conventionally thought waste collection should be free as done courtesy 2011 flooding edict of the Federal Government but as he has put it refuse collection and disposal is tasking and expensive hence discipline and new process of charging was introduced to reduce complication, here he adduced the fact that it had been effective and possible through the native-intelligence of the management of OYOWMA under which WAE is carrying out its own assignment.
However, he admitted that with the nature of the job OYOWMA/WAE is doing there is no way one can rule out sentiment especially that things are changing for better and people found it hard to change easily with time.Here he categorized that since Private Public Partnership activities is a combination of bringing two different entities together under one umbrella's convenience (OYOWMA) yet there is no way there will still not be usual idiosyncratic challenges being experienced by workers since Public Service Provider is more or less run as a civil service organization and Private Service Provider is profit oriented, yet there are just regulation and rules that control both for proper and effective result.
He even admitted to enlighten members of the staff working within and without to know many challenges are intertwined and in the existence as they carry out their duty, where for political reason or others, the members of the public may be unruly and not-accommodating; as it is so even in the advanced countries like United Kingdom, England, Holland e.t.c, hence the members of the staff should be reticent and not aggressive but calm, patient and responsibly-responsive.
Meanwhile, he reiterated that OYOWMA/WAE have profoundly planned, arranged good pattern, to see that proficiency and painstaking effort is brought into the job at hand, reason why they are greatly launching more enlightenment and education of the public through print,radio and television, despite the fact that the members of the public do not want to drop the old habit for free things, as they want the government to be collecting and disposing the refuse of what they eat, use and caused without having being responsible to acknowledge with small token of cost, yet they are stressing and emphasizing through education and enlightenment with print and electronic media.
Nevertheless, he vouched that since the right hands and mechanism had been put in placed and that they work twenty four seven round the clock throughout on the street, to see that proper job is done, in refuse collection and disposal, he is confident and committed to say good job would be done and an immense difference would be made, to prove that things had come to change for good, in respect of the maintenance of environmental sanitation therefore, expatiated that the reason why West Africa Energy was co opted to work under OYOWMA is clearly to create departments for collection of refuse, disposal of it, and the value processing of the waste into energy and production of some materials eventually, which would come into actualization soonest, with the right mechanism later to be put in place, as time goes on for "Waste to Wealth"
And here I felt so satisfied that the need to represent the public in getting information from the facts, figures and files of the OYOWMA to know the state of the environmental status had been achieved and that the members of the public too can now see the reason why they have to cooperate with the government to see things work well and effectively for the good of all through maintaining cleanliness and proper environmental sanitation within Oyo state.
By and large the amiable and accommodating Chief Executive Officer of West African Energy ; Mr. Paul Callaghan now advised that the Public should create good habit to play their own part well in allowing things to work well while Private Service Providers should often keep the members of the public abreast of the routine that refuse collection entails, for effective interrelationship of activities through dual responsibilities.
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