By: Felix Ikpotor
People of Kwawa Community in Khana local council of Rivers State are now accusing the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) of neglecting the community in it’s activities.
Indigenes of the community called on the agency to put in place a committee that would incorporate them in the clean-up exercise and provide portable water in their community as recommended by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The community’s reaction followed a recent visit by a team from the agency led by its Project Coordinator, Dr. Ferdinand Giadom to oil impacted sites in the community
Public Relations Officer of Kwawa Council of Chiefs and Elders, Chief Magnus Edooh accused HYPREP of not recognizing the community on issues regarding to the clean-up as one of the most impacted communities.
” Kwawa people frowns at the action and attitude of HYPREP and I think it’s high time leaders of HYPREP should engage with the people that owns the land.This oil spillage that we are talking about, Kwawa is one of the communities that experienced huge amount of oil spillage and our area is being called a major impacted site”, he said.
On his part, the Community Development Committee (CDC) Chairman, Felix Nwideedu urged the interventionist agency to be fair in their dealings with the communities in order to maintain the peace in the its areas of operation.
“HYPREP has not been fair enough in what they are doing. Last time, we had there was a visit to the location in Kwawa community and nobody from the youth angle, CDC, council of chiefs or women were there to represent the community and the purpose of that visit is not known uptil now. Today, we are also aware of a meeting going on concerning the affected communities, Kwawa community is one the communities with high level spillage, if there is a meeting and there is nobody from Kwawa it’s very wrong. Whatever is going on, every community should be represented,” he insisted.
Also, the youth leader of Kwawa Community, Ledee Fred on his part called on the agency to engage youths of the community in their activities.
“It’s to unfortunate that HYPREP with a mandate to serve the people can occasionally come to Kwawa without informing the community as protocol demands. Our peaceful nature is being seen as a weakness and as such I use this opportunity to call on all relevant authorities to advice HYPREP to desist from this act as it’s capable of breaching the peace in the area”, he stated.
However, the agency had severally stated that it’s engaging with relevant stakeholders and communities in carrying out the mandate of remediating oil impacted sites in Ogoniland.
