Rejects letter for conversion of garden to cemetery in Gwarimpa Estate
The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) has cautioned the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) over its attempt to convert a garden in Gwarimpa Estate to a cemetery.
The Managing Director of the FHA, Terver Gemade, said that his office received a letter of conversion of a garden in the estate to a cemetery from the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), a parastatal under the FCTA, but the letter was rejected.
Gemade, whose office controls a large part of a 5,000 housing unit in Gwarinpa Estate, also accused the FCT administration of converting other green areas in the estate to other use.
“There are areas we have demolished and were again allocated by the FCTA,” he said.
He said a joint committee between FHA and AEPB on controversial environmental issues would look into the problem of the cemetery and other issues, saying the committee was long overdue.
Gemade noted that the management of waste in the estate, along with the resettlement of four villages in the estate by the FCT administration, had also become a serious environmental issue.
On his part, the Director of the AEPB, Isa Shuaibu, lamented that there were several environmental issues giving his board sleepless nights.
He said AEPB could no longer fold its arms and watch the alarming rate of environmental abuse in the estate, saying that about 98 percent of houses in the estate had not been paying their waste bill.
The AEPB boss, who promised to come down hard on defaulters of environmental regulation in the estate, solicited for the cooperation of the FHA in tackling the problem.
