Touting : Anambra council chairman vows to deal with touts, harps on cleanliness

Touting: Anambra council chairman vows to deal with touts, harps on cleanliness

By Chris Okafor, Onitsha

Irked by the illegal activities of touts in Anambra State, the caretaker committee chairman of Idemili North Local Government Area, Hon. Chuks Igboanua, weekend vowed to deal ruthlessly with any touts caught, pointing out that they portray the image of Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo' and the  the people of the State in bad light.

Making the vow during the clean up exercise in his area, the council boss reiterated that such menace of the touts would not be tolerated in his domaim as it is a slight on the Governor and people.

"We rammed into these touts and I asked them who they were and as they were trying to explain, some of them ran away, to show you that what they are doing is illegal. We can't allow this to happen in Idemili North from next week, we will not spare anybody involve.

"I have my strike force  and we are going to work jointly with the police and other security operatives. They spoil the image of the governor. We don't know anything about them until now. When I arrest anyone I don't mind taking him to Awka and hand him over to the appropriate authority," he vowed.

On sanitation he said that sequel to lack of announcement in the media, compliance was low but was quick to add that however, much was achieved especially at Oyeolisa market.

"Compliance was low because there was no media announcement earlier, so it was difficult to stop movement of vehicles and people. However, we did much desilting at Oyeolisa market, the traders complied but getting bulldozers, tractors, escalators, among others to evacuate the wastes was the problem because we had in mind of using casual labourers.

"The labourers we engaged were not able to use the shovels to throw the wastes into the tippers as they are not used to that. But the cleanliness is a continuous exercise. We directed residents and everyone to bring the wastes outside for evacuation," he explained.

On the increase of the revenue base of the council, he expressed optimism that it would be increased, hinting that what affected it to decrease was because his predecessor collected the Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, earlier prior to his appointment as the council chairman.

"We were directed to stop everything about revenue collection until after the election. Again January to August revenue has been collected before we came into office. The remaining three months to end of year we could not do much because when you ask for payment of IGR they will present receipts to back up their claim that they have made payment which is done periodically," the council boss further explained.