Efio-Ita Nyok|12 July 2016|7:59AM
On Thursday 21 July, Governor Ben Ayade's aide on Primary Healthcare, the indefatigable Dr Betta Edu, will be leading a handful of volunteers in the forthcoming The Clean Calabar Project where youths and Cross Riverians alike are anticipated to embark on cleaning designated spots in the state capital as a way of contributing their patriotic quota to fixing waste management in the state.
While this decision by the Director General of Cross River State Primary Health Care Development Agency has received a nod from many quarters, two Cross Riverians, namely, Elihu Osim Enyiego and Efio-Ita Nyok, have expressed their reservations. Enyiego raised a set of eight questions that bordered on the sustainability of the initiative, while Nyok picked holes on the critical pose of Dr Edu against those who recently decried poor waste management in the state capital, Calabar. Their reservations made headlines yesterday 11 July; this incited the DG, CRSPHCDA to reply back through a social media thread. Among other things, Dr Edu explained that her volunteering disposition is not informed by the fact that the state capital was dirty but because she wanted to contribute her personal quota to waste management in the state and inspire a generation of volunteers. It is perceived in some quarters that Dr Edu carefully avoided the salient observations made by her critics. Read her response that is followed by her critics observations and draw your independent conclusion:
Dr Betta Edu
When I volunteered to help clean my community in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2009, it was not because they didnt have a working waste management system.
When I volunteered to help people living with mental and physical challenges in a hospice in Arkansas it was not because they didnt have great doctors and health workers in that state.
I volunteered because I wanted to contribute my own quota to the development and growth as well as the health of my immediate community at the time.
Today, one of my biggest aspiration is to help young people imbibe a culture of volunteerism. What can we do to support the wonderful work already done by the Government of Cross River State to keep our immediate community clean? How can we volunteer to give government useful security information that will make our communities safer? How can we volunteer during meetings, health outreaches etc to reach out to others and get things done without being paid?
In the last one week I have had endless calls, recieved young people from different organisation in my office seeking to VOLUNTEER, young people who are craving to make a difference in their communities rather than sit and find faults. Am proud of the young generation in CRS. With God on our side we will make a difference.
Thank you to all the young people who have promised to be there, the National youth council, leos club, SUG crutech, dynamic youth org. Amongs others that have indicated interest to volunteer.
LETS BUILD A GENERATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE THAT ARE WILLING TO VOLUNTEER TO MAKE CROSS RIVER STATE BETTER!
Elihu Osim Enyiego
Over the years, I have come to admire Madam Beta Edu so very much, having worked with her as a colleague in the duty of saving lives. She is an enterprising woman, full of ideas and an uncanny will to pursue her passion, she reminds me of the grand slammer – Serena Williams.
But, least we are seen as making a joke or a jamboree of a very serious situation let’s pause and reflect over these “common sense” questions.
1. Is this a run-of-the-mill event, meant to enlighten citizens and reignite the “Clean-Calabar” spirit or is it an NGO style support project like FHI is to healthcare?
2. How will it be funded (with all the T-Shirts, Music, Food and whatever else that awaits participantsssss). Even in Free-Town, nothing is free they say.
3. How sustainable will this program be? – Waste management is no joke, it’s a full time job. In fact, an industry has evolved around it. Waste is generated “continually” (not continuously) by humans and must be removed continuously too.
4. Can we sustain waste management through volunteerism . . . consistently consistent?
5. What happens to those EMPLOYED to clean up the city? I hear there are not doing a decent job consequent upon a funding fatigue and here we are expending in waste management “Champagne”
6. Are citizens no longer paying “Sanitation Levy” – a TAX? Is it no more enough to cater to waste management? I hear these citizens are yet to recover from the exorbitant cost of procuring bins and yet there expected to volunteer to clean up the city?
7. When did Keeping Calabar Clean become an issue – a trending hashtag? Isn’t it the cleanest city in WA anymore?
8. When, why and how did Keeping Calabar Clean a prayer point or bazaar matter? – shouldn’t we be asking this questions rather than creating crusades around it.
I end my “common-sense” Question session with this quote:
“I was hungry and you formed a committee to investigate my hunger. I was homeless and you filed a report on my plight. I was sick and you held a seminar on the situation of the underprivileged. You investigated all aspects of my plight and yet I am still hungry, homeless and sick.”—Author unknown.
Efio-Ita Nyok
This is commendable. But, I have my reservations: the Director General of the state Primary Health Care Development Agency, Betta Edu, derided critics of the poor Waste Management system in the state.
She went as far as driving from CRUTECH gate at Ekpo Abasi (Calabar South) to 8 miles (Calabar Municipality), according to her, and claimed she didn't find dirts sprawling in the streets of the state capital: It's on this premise that she condemned as dishonest those who floated the clean #ThisIsNotCalabar hashtag.
However, when she was referred to a thousand and one sites where dirts were littering Calabar, she couldn't offer an apology —she ran away from the thread.
The question now becomes: Is Calabar, Cross River State capital, clean!? If it was clean, why this initiative? If it was not clean, what was the initiative behind rating critics as dishonest?
I am afraid that DG Betta Edu is dragging you Ifere Paul into the exercise to launder it. She may not be honest, as those critics where not honest —because Calabar is clean.
It's on this basis that I will not, even though I would love to, show up for this patriotic exercise.
Nevertheless, I wish to commend the both of you, that is, Paul and Edu, for coming up with the initiative.
Best Regards.
Efio-Ita Nyok
Is a Blogger & the Editor of Negroidhaven.org (Negroid Haven)