Lagos Environmental Sanitation Corps, is stepping up its operations and ensuring total clampdown on the arrest of recalcitrant traders not yielding to the warnings and advocacy on street trading and hawking in the State.

According to the agency, this followed the increasing traffic gridlock due to the activities of street traders and the consequent fatalities meted out to those trading on walkways and setbacks as a result of reckless driving by some drivers.

Its Corps Marshal, Akinpelu Gbemisola who said this at the agency’s headquarters, said Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu had directed that all the roads be rid of any form of impediment for free flow of traffic and safety of all and sundry.

Gbemisola, a retired Police Commissioner said the rising numbers of hawkers on major highways posed a grave security implications for motorists as criminals disguised as hawkers, exploiting the opportunity to dispossess them of their valuables.

She said directives had been given to officers to move out on all the major highways to arrest the hawkers for appropriate prosecution, saying roads were not meant for trading, urging traders to go into State-approved markets to engage in legalised trading activities.

She recounted that many lives have been lost due to brake failure as ‘hit and run’ drivers sometimes knock down hawkers, while some roads are always locked down as a result of activities of traders who display their goods on walkways and road sides for sale thereby impeding free vehicular and human movements on our roads.

Also commenting on the ongoing Ikoyi/Victoria Island Clean-up exercise which has recorded remarkable success with the joint effort of other agencies such as Environmental and Special Offences Unit (Taskforce), Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Lagos State Special Offences (Mobile) Courts and the Lagos Neighbourhood Safety Corps (LNSC), she however expressed the readiness of LAGESC operatives in sustaining the cleared areas in Ikoyi and Victoria Island, while also warning that anybody found around these cleared areas will be prosecuted and their seized goods be forfeited.

She finally explained that the Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Tunji Bello has also directed that any of the Agency’s operatives found in any act compromising on this directive and the Clean-Up Exercise be dealt with accordingly.