Efio-Ita Nyok|12 July 2016|7:45AM
The Cross River State Primary Health Care Development Agency under the leadership of her doyen, Dr Betta Edu, in collaboration with Hit FM, a privately-owned owned radio broadcasting station in the Cross River State capital, Calabar is embarking on The Clean Calabar Project.
Information has it that Dr Betta Edu will be volunteering to keep Calabar clean as she has invited other youths in the state capital to join her. Popular public policy analyst, Ifere Paul, has indicated interest in joining Dr Edu. 'I have decided to take the #VolunteerToKeepCalabarClean challenge to you… Then join me as I stand behind Dr (Mrs) Betta Edu to take this street challenge to keep the streets of Calabar clean', Paul observed.
The schedule is as follows:
Date: 21st July, 2016
Meeting Point: Watt Market Roundabout
Start Time: 9am Prompt
Time End: 2pm
However, one Elihu Osim Enyiego, a social media user has raised some observations bordering on the project. He couches his observation in eight questions which primarily concerns itself with the sustainability of the project. Read his words,
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
Is a Blogger & the Editor of Negroidhaven.org (Negroid Haven)
