Abia State Commissioner for Environment, Philemon Ogbonna, has urged traders and other residents to ensure that their surroundings are always kept clean.
He also alleged that some personnel of the Police and Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corps, NSCDS, diverted some arrested environmental sanitation defaulters to their offices.
The Commissioner, who was represented by Ikechuckwu Oriuwa, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, made the disclosure while speaking to Journalists after monitoring the monthly clean-up.
He noted that every arrested defaulter should be brought to a constituted Environmental Court at the Abia State High Court in Umuahia, not into their own offices.
“What they do is they arrest people and take them into their own barracks. They claim they use them for manual labour”, the Commissioner frowned.
Also, the Chairman, Abia State House of Assembly Committee on Environment, Kalu Mba-Nwoke, alleged that some officers of the NSCDS attacked those enforcing the cleanup exercise at FMC junction, Umuahia, beating up the personnel and tearing the uniform of an Abia State officer.
According to the Lawmaker, an NSCDS officer who was not in uniform refused to properly identify himself when he was accosted, but chose to invite his colleagues to pounce on the enforcement team.
Meanwhile, out of the 63 persons officially arrested on Saturday, 53 persons were prosecuted while 10 others were pardoned because of health challenges, examinations and for being underage by the environmental court.
