Lagos State government has vowed to deal ruthlessly with any erring Private Sector Participation (PSP) operator who extort money from residents by giving them outrageous bills.

The government called on residents to report cases of outrageous bills by the PSP waste operators to the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) for appropriate action.

The Managing Director, LAWMA, Mr. Ola Oresanya, who spoke after monitoring the monthly environmental sanitation exercise in Ikorodu Local Government, said the Authority had been inundated with reports of outrageous bills being charged by PSP operators.

“Members of the public should report such complaints to LAWMA through text messages using the phone numbers on the letter head in the bills,” he said.

“If you see the new bill being issued now, it’s a partnership between LAWMA and the PSP operators, so you are to pay to the PSP, it is not payment before service, it is payment after service and if you are not pleased with the bill, LAWMA telephone number is on it. You can call if you are not pleased with the bill issued to you, we would respond to make sure that you are not cheated.

“We are doing this to make sure that we recover part of the cost the state government is expending monthly on waste collection. The state government is still paying but we are making sure that we subsidize and make sure that people pay for the service we render. So, the payment to PSP all over the state is legal.”

The LAWMA boss also said the Authority had been distributing waste containers to discourage residents from dumping waste carelessly.

“We are compelling people to have containers where they can store their waste for at least one week and then you wait for the PSP man to come and collect it. That kind of education is also going on with the local government chairmen so that everybody in Lagos would have containers and if you don’t have it, it means you are the one dumping on the road,” he said.