The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) on Thursday in Abuja cleared scavengers’ colony in Katampe District, with a view to combating security threats in the area.

Mr Ihkaro Attah, the Senior Special Assistant on Monitoring, Inspection and Enforcement to the FCT Minister, who led the operation, cautioned FCT natives to desist from renting their cashew plantations to scavengers.

“Part of our work is actually to rid the city of activities of scavengers and criminally minded refuse collectors.

“We came here in Katampe, where we met them heavily hidden in this cashew plantation and we have gone ahead to remove them.

“They are people who are largely tied to crime, we even saw someone’s plate number, we asked them what they are doing with someone’s number plate, they could not explain, so we had to collect it from them.

“Sometimes we see female handbags, shoes, cloths it may be because women are vulnerable, ” he said.

Attah reiterated the commitment of the FCT Administration in removing scavengers’ colonies in Federal Capital City (FCC).

“We are going after scavengers strongly in Abuja, the FCT Minister has given us a matching order while all the security chiefs are giving us maximum support that we must go and remove all the scavengers in their colonies across the city.

They are very dangerous people, may be some indigenous owners of cashew trees rent out their cashew plantation to them or some are being chased out and their farm being taken over by these dangerous elements, we will keep removing them.

“Some of the indigenes said they do not rent the cashew plantation to them. Some said they enter their cashew plantation in large numbers and threaten them and for their own safety they left them and disappeared,” he added.

Attah said it was imperative for all scavengers to move to designated site at Gosa dump site, saying, “if we constantly clear them, they will move to the area designated for them, which is the Gosa dump site.

“We have a large land for them to go and do their activities there around the refuse community, but if they don’t go, we will keep coming after them,” he explained.

He urged owners of the land to fence and develop it because if the owners develop their land scavengers would not stay.

On his part, Malam Kaka Bello, Assistant Director, Monitoring and Enforcement, Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), appealed to all scavengers in FCC to move to designated site meant for them in Gosa.

“It is a clean-up exercise of scavengers living here and they have been removed several times but they keep coming back. We gave them two weeks, there is a little compliance but we still need to mop up the area.

“We are using this medium to appeal to these scavengers to please leave the city because there is no part of the city that is designated for their activities, especially residential areas like this and road corridors,’’ Bello said. (NAN)