Agency Seals 15 Facilities For Violating Environmental Laws

National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) yesterday sealed 15 facilities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) for violating the provisions of environmental laws.

NESREA recently embarked on a fresh round of compliance monitoring exercise to facilities in and around FCT in a move to exact compliance from erring facilities.

The agency had informed that the exercise would be followed by an enforcement action where facilities would be sanctioned for crimes against the environment.

The NESREA (Establishment) Act, 2007 established the agency with the primary responsibility of enforcing environmental standards, regulations, rules, laws, policies and guidelines which protect and enhance the quality of the environment.

However, the director-general of NESREA, Prof Aliyu Jauro said the agency carries out compliance management before embarking on any enforcement.

He said, “Before we carry out any enforcement, we have a process. We do what we call compliance management, we follow them up and those who refuse to comply, we give them notice, after a while, we also come back to see if they have complied. We usually serve this notice about three to four times, and the facilities that are not ready to comply, we then sanction them.”

Prof Jauro said some of the facilities sealed, which are on the construction centre, failed to carry out Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) while others have not done environmental audit, adding that the exercise was to ensure that what these facilities do during the construction does not affect the environment.

“We have sealed a total of about 15 facilities here in the FCT. Some of these facilities are in the construction centre; those that are building estates and other related construction business. Some of them have not done EIA and some have not done environmental audits,” he said.