Sole Administrator of the Rivers State Waste Management Agency (RIWAMA), Bro Felix Obuah, has raised the alarm over the “unwarranted arrest, detention and attacks on Service Providers, working with the Agency.”

He lamented that this is happening despite the clear statement by the State Governor, Barrister Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, during a live radio programme in Port Harcourt on Monday last week – two days before the commencement of the total lockdown in Port Harcourt and Obio/Akpor local government areas – that Service Providers working with RIWAMA are on essential service of keeping the state clean, and should therefore be accorded unhindered access to all roads and streets in the state to evacuate wastes and continue to keep Port Harcourt, the state capital, and its environs clean.

Obuah in a statement on Monday by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Jerry Needam, noted with sadness that “in spite of the Governor’s clear directive” service providers working with the RIWAMA “have been on many occasions attacked, subjected to severe beaten, wounded by some locals and, in some cases arrested, detained and their operational vehicles impounded by security agencies.”

The RIWAMA Sole Administrator vowed to bring the perpetrators to book. He disclosed that the Chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area, Hon Solomon Eke, is working closely with security agents to bring those who attacked the service providers to justice.

Obuah made it clear that “wastes evacuation at this time of COVID-19 pandemic is key for the overall health condition of all those living and doing business in the state; therefore, they should be encouraged to do their work, and not to attack and wound them, as we have witnessed in the past six days.”

He called for an end to attacks on RIWAMA service providers, “as the Agency will do all within its powers, to bring the culprits to justice.”