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The Calabar Urban Development Authority – CUDA has extended a note of warning to various degrees of road defacers in Calabar through a sensitization walk carried out earlier on today.
The warning which was issued through the agency’s executive secretary Mr. JoeMary Ekeng-Ita, explained that most road gridlock around town is caused by the incessant activities of mechanics and car wash companies who decide to extend their businesses into most road walkways.
Expressing dissatisfaction, Mr. Ekeng-Ita noted that it has become pertinent to address this issue but first by thoroughly sending out strong notice of warnings and sensitization such as this.
In his words; “today’s exercise is to carry out an awareness. Mostly to the mechanics on our roads. Most of the mechanics have turned our city roads into their workshops.
“Vehicles are packed indiscriminately without regards to other road users. They pack the vehicles there, drop the engine, spill oil on the road.
“So, this exercise is to sensitize them that such attitude is not good because CUDA has been saddled with the responsibility to take care of those kind of issues”
Touring round most of the affected areas in Calabar South and Calabar Municipality, the Executive Secretary also decried the situation where most of these businesses operating within Calabar, fail to make provision of convenience for their customers who in turn pollute the environment indiscriminately, making it not conducive for other citizens.
“You’d agree with me that almost all the workshops, maybe very few, have convenience for their customers.
They litter the whole place, they urinate anyway and do all sort of things because they don’t have conveniences in those workshops and so we are trying to enforce that.
“If you must have a workshop where 20-30 people are gathered everyday, you should have convenience for them to use”, he said.
Also warning against the activities of car wash companies occupying most roads in Calabar, the agency warned that all such operations must be taken off the road to preserve the integrity of these roads constructed to stand the taste of time as it cost government so much to fix them.
Notably, the agency through it’s Executive Secretary hinted that enforcement would be thorough and would come after the easter holidays.
“We will continue move around town, give them enough time to adjust so that by the time we clamp down on them, they won’t have any excuse.
“We had carried out an announcement about three weeks ago which was on radio for about 5 days.
When we do this, we will continue with the announcement.
“We are looking at starting to enforce somewhere in the middle of April, just after the easter holidays. So they can have ample time to checkmate most of these highlighted issues” he added
