LAGOS TAKES SANITATION, HYGIENE ADVOCACY TO MARKET LEADERS
As part of efforts to achieve an organised market and sustain food safety, the Lagos State Government has taken its market sanitation and hygiene advocacy to market leaders.
Addressing market leaders during the maiden edition of a sensitisation programme at Ifako-Ijaiye Local Council Development Area (LCDA) Secretariat, the Permanent Secretary, Office of Environmental Services, Dr. Omobolaji Gaji, said the markets should always be clean and hygienic food handling process maintained to ensure socio-economic wellbeing of residents.
Gaji said Lagos State had been the epicentre of public health diseases since the 2014 Ebola case, COVID-19, Lassa fever and Cholera, noting that there is an associative link between the market environment, illnesses and diseases that threaten human existence.
The Permanent Secretary, represented by Deputy Director of Sanitation, Mrs. Omoyeni Balogun, observed that all market environments are characterised by social behaviours that impact the aesthetics of the environment, citing examples like improper display and storage of food items, indiscriminate dumping of refuse, just as he noted that emerging epidemic and pandemic threats confronting humanity have links to markets.
“Insanitary behaviours, open defecation, littering and blocking the drainage system and more, deface our markets and are constant threats to life and property, directly and indirectly”, he said.
Pointing out that all food items pass through the market environment and are exposed to both intrinsic and extrinsic high-risk factors of unhealthy practices, the Commissioner explained that the way food items are displayed could bring about contamination from environmental pollutants.
Gaji, who also frowned at indiscriminate refuse disposal, reminded Lagosians, especially market women and men, to ensure that they sort their waste from source, saying that every stakeholder must be involved in the new environmental reforms.
In her welcome address, the representative of the Chairman Ifako-Ijaiye LCDA, Princess Mariam Bisi appealed to market leaders to shun street trading and restrict all trading activities to the market, stressing that it is in the interest of all to respect the Lagos State and Local Government environmental laws.
Participants at the Orientation programme included market Men and Women, Environmental Health Officers as well as Local Government officials.
KA/TMS/OS
CAPTION:
PIX: (L-R) Director, Environmental Health Unit, Office of Environmental Services, Sanitarian Olaewe Adewale; Iyaloja-General of Ifako-Ijaiye, Local Government, Chief Doyin Ogunbiyi; Representatives of Ifako-Ijaiye Local Government Chairman and Head Human Resources, Ifako-Ijaiye Local Government, Princess Bisi Mariam; Representatives of the Director of Drainage Maintenance and Assistant Director, Engr. Yetunde Okanlawon; and Representatives of the Permanent Secretary, Office of Environmental Services and Deputy Director, Sanitation Service, Mrs. Omoyemi Balogun, during the one-day sensitisation programme on market sanitation and hygiene organised for market leaders in Ifako-Ijaiye LCDA.
