N9b debt: Abuja Board insists on recovering waste service bills

The Abuja Environmental Protection Board has reiterated its commitment to recover N9 billion debt owed by some FCT residents and organisations for waste management bills.
Shehu Lawan, the Chairman, FCT Ministerial Special Task-force on Recovering of Debts Owed AEPB, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday in Abuja.
Lawan said that the board submitted a report to the FCT Minister, Malam Mohammad Bello, complaining that some FCT residents refused to pay their waste management bills.
He said the minister constituted a Special Taskforce on Recovering of Debt, on May 25 and saddled it with the responsibility of recovering the N9 billion from the board`s debtors.
According to him, the residents in the FCT, especially hotels and some shopping plazas are not paying their service bills.
Lawan said: “The hotels have refused to pay their service bills since 2012 and we are already taking action.
“In July 2015, the AEPB had an agreement with all hotels in the city on the issue, but we discovered that they were not ready to cooperate with the board.
“The constituted task-force had decided to divide themselves into two, visiting different areas in the FCT, disconnecting hotels and shopping plaza’s service sewer lines.
“We believe that with the action, they will start responding; actually, most of the hotels and plazas have started cooperating now.
“Some are paying half of the money they owed and promised to come back; some who also promised to be paying part payment are responding.
“We cannot continue keeping quiet, the only way to recover all the debt is to be disconnecting their service lines so that their service delivery to their own customers will not be effective.”
Lawan said that the Minister gave the task-force three months to recover all the debt.
He added that after the three months, the board submitted a report on the debt recovered, but many organisations were still indebted.
According to him, the minister decided to give the board extra two months to ensure that the debts are recovered.
He said: “We are making every effort to ensure that the N9 billion is recovered within the two months.
“So far, we have recovered reasonable amount of money, although, some still owe us, we also had agreement with some on how they will be remitting their money.”
Lawan explained the task force is disconnecting Maitama areas of FCT, saying they will make sure that the board visits every organisation that owed it in the FCT.