PAUL NWOSU
Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, CFR, on Friday, March 31, led the way to Ochanja market in Onitsha to launch the epochal operation *Clean, Green and Sustainable Anambra* by undertaking the desilting of the major drainages around the market.
Early last month he returned to Onitsha to assess the progress of desilting around the market and select areas of the city.
His presence on those two occasions gave an indication of the kind of positive impact cleared drainages and roads, devoid of street trading, can bring to bear on Anambra State as an environmental cynosure.
It is remarkable though that for out of respect for the Governor or fear of being arrested, the traders receded to their shops from the main Ochanja road and adjoining streets in the environs while the visit lasted.
There was some semblance of sanity as all the thoroughfares leading to the market had no street trading going on. But, shortly after each visit, the traders spilled back into the roads and streets like a broken water dam.
Deducible from this is that most of the traders that we see displaying their products on the streets and roads actually have shops within the markets where they ought to undertake their normal trading. But due to their eagerness to arrest customers before they enter the actual confines of the market, they overzealously take their hustling into the streets. The war for buyers’ attention is thus moved to the roads, streets, alleys, by-ways, etc.
Their unsavoury activities ultimately have negative consequences on the environment. The drainage systems were not designed to be truncated by frenzied cravings to erect all manner of shops on them to obstructs the free flow of water. The everyday reality of clogged drainages and gutters is as a result of the wanton disorderlines and indiscretions of our traders.
This unhealthy matter of street trading has to stop because this administration places a premium on a clean and green environment.
Traders are henceforth advised to go back to their shops or face stiff penalties.
In the days and weeks ahead, the OCHA Brigade will be buoyed up to enforce the total ban on street trading all over Anambra State.
The removal of street traders and touts will also go a long way in ensuring the serenity and even security of the state. It is through the presence of street traders that ill-assorted crooks surface on our streets and roads to snatch peoples phones and hand bags.
The OCHA Brigade is well-drilled to decongest Anambra streets and roads of the wandering traders and unauthorized merchants who somehow create an enabling atmosphere for pick-pockets to thrive.
Once the traders are forced back into their shops, it would be easy for government to regulate the collection of taxes and other legitimate revenue.
The collection of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) will be given a new lease of life once the artful dodgers who masquerade as street traders are driven off the roads.
The Anambra environment will become a thing to cherish once the rowdiness associated with street trading is done away with for good.
Dislodging street traders is a sure way of ensuring that the peaceful, liveable, pleasurable and prosperous homeland promised by Governor Soludo is achieved.
*Sir Paul Nwosu*
Commissioner for Information
Anambra State