Govt plans bill to check menace of 'pure water'
From Jide Olatuyi (Abuja)
PROLIFERATION and indiscriminate production of sachet water popularly called "pure water" may soon be banned in the country.
At a press briefing in Abuja yesterday, the Minister for Environment, Col. Bala Mande (rtd) said President Olusegun Obasanjo has given the ministry approval for the preparation of a bill to ban sachet water. He said the bill would soon be ready.
According to him, the move has become very necessary in order to curtail the menace and the dangers posed by the disposal of the nylon waste of the "pure water" and similar products to nature, Nigerians, agriculture and environment in general.
Mande explained that the processes of production of the 'pure water,' the unhealthy disposal of its remnants and its proliferation constitute non-biodegradable danger to agricultural productivity, "because these cellophane bags takes not less than sixty years to mix with soil particles in the ground."
During this period, he said, the bags would not only disrupt the flow of oxygen in the soil but would negatively impact on its fertility.
Mande stated that since the government is concerned about food security, anything that would hamper agricultural productivity would naturally be looked into in order to avert future calamity.
The bill will prescribe better methods of packaging, which will not be injurious to the environment.
The new form of packaging, according to the minister, would be done in such a way that it would be recycled and even be more useful to the environment when it is disposed off.
Mande, who highlighted some of the successes recorded and challenges facing the ministry, insisted that the July 31, 2008 date set as the deadline for cessation of Gas flaring in the country is not negotiable.
The minister decried the absence of operators in the oil and gas sector at a two-day interactive forum on how to preserve the environment from gas flaring and pollution in Abuja last week.
"The ministry is tackling the operators for their refusal to honour the invitation to an occasion scheduled to be attended by the President," he said
He highlighted seven major policy directions of the ministry that would be deployed to address poor environmental sanitation situation in the country.
The draft document include the National Environmental Sanitation Policy (NESP), Policy guidelines on Sanitary Inspection of Premises (including House to House Sanitary Inspection), Policy guidelines on Excreta and Sewage Management, Policy Guidelines on Pest and Vector Control, Policy guidelines on School Sanitation and the National Environmental Sanitation Action Plan (NESAP).
