The Federal Government of Nigeria recently flagged off the second phase of the free medical outreach programme as a continued effort towards the clean-up of Ogoniland oil spill.
According to Dr. Marvin Dekil, Project Coordinator, Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) who claimed that phase two of the medical outreach was approved following the success achieved during the first phase which caught the attention of President Muhammadu Buhari.
He noted that the residents lack good medical care while others were too impoverished to attend to their medical needs.
In addition to the foregoing, HYPREP is set to kick start a Livelihoods Intervention Programme to offer entrepreneurial skills to Ogoni women and youths, to enable them create wealth for themselves, families and the communities.
Dekil emphasized the importance of the second edition of the HYPREP health outreach programme, stressing that it precedes the remediation of impacted sites.
“Presently, the publication for invitation for pre-qualification of contractors for remediation of hydrocarbon impacted sites in Ogoniland is in some national and international dailies. The exercise will be the culmination of all the processes we have put in place right from the inception of the Project Coordination Office in March, 2017”, he stated.
He assured that, “the remediation of Ogoniland will be done only by experienced and best hands locally and internationally so as to achieve the desired results of restoring the environment back to an acceptable standard”.
Dekil noted that while medical outreach is on-going, plans were underway for the provision of potable water through the reconstruction of existing water facilities in the land and the construction of new ones to fill the supply gaps in the communities.
This he explained were part of deliberate efforts by the federal government to implement another key recommendation of the UNEP Report which is the restoration of livelihoods in impacted communities whose sources of living were affected by hydrocarbon pollution.
