Organization to close substandard environmental health schools

The Environmental Health Officer Registration Council of Nigeria (EHORECON) has warned that the council will soon embark on closure of sub-standard environmental health schools to enforce standard.

Mr Dominic Abonyi, Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of the council gave the warning in Abuja on Thursday during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

Abonyi said the plan was part of ways to creating a vibrant educational system and ensure standard in the environmental health schools across the country.

“Our basic plan is to close down all the environment health schools that are not up to standard because they do not give quality education to our officers.

“The plan I believe will prevent bringing in environmental health officers that may not possess the necessary skills required into the field.

“Those schools that are not accredited either by our council, the National Universities Commission (NUC) or the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) would be closed down.

“The plan will help us to know that all the existing schools must have our licence and can answer our name as well, “ he said.

Abonyi noted that the numbers of environmental health officers who are actually working for government are few.

He said the officers needed to be increased, adding that most of the officers from the former Subsidy Reinvestment Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) are yet to be employed.

According to him, the easiest way to stop the spread of Lassa fever and outbreak of other diseases in the country is to employ more hands that would boost cleanliness.

“More environmental health officers should be recruited and deployed to both the federal and the local levels.

“We must engage our people, who are well trained to foster and address these problems we are facing.

“We as officers cannot allow these terrible diseases to ravage our nation; we must work tremendously to ensure that our environment is clean, so that other aspect of our economy can equally improve, “ he said.

Abonyi, however, advised Nigerians to always keep their environment clean and maintain good sanitation habits.