The European Commission on Tuesday, January 30, 2018 summoned ministers from nine EU member states for a final chance to pledge how they will tackle air pollution before facing legal action for failing to meet the bloc’s emissions limits.
Karmenu Vella, Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries of the European Commission
According to EU Environment Commissioner, Karmenu Vella, every year, over 400,000 Europeans die prematurely due to poor air quality, which triggers conditions such as asthma, heart disease and lung cancer.
One of the main pollutants in cities is vehicles, especially those running on diesel fuel.
The nine countries invited to the Brussels talks, Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, all face court proceedings if they do not take steps to curb emissions.
“It is clear that the agreed air quality limits for several key pollutants had to be met already many years ago,’’ Vella wrote recently, adding that measures introduced or planned by the member states in question “are not enough.”
During the talks, activists from the environmental campaign group Greenpeace protested outside the European Commission with banners demanding “Clean Air Now.”
According to Benjamin Stephen of Greenpeace, car fumes are killing tens of thousands across Europe, accusing governments of failing to take the necessary steps to meet air pollution limits.
“That is criminal, and should be penalised,’’ Stephen added.
German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks has said ahead of Tuesday’s talks that Berlin had failed to take the necessary steps, while also appealing to the car industry to clean up diesel vehicles.
The Indian capital, New Delhi, is the country’s most polluted city, while Uttar Pradesh is the country’s most polluted state, a new report has revealed.
Air pollution in New Delhi
The report, titled “Airpocalypse II”, by global environmental organisation Greenpeace’s India chapter, has found that Delhi is the most polluted city in India, while with 15 of its cities among the 30 polluted cities of the country, Uttar Pradesh is India’s most polluted state.
According to the report, these cities in Uttar Pradesh include state capital Lucknow, Noida and Ghaziabad on outskirts of Delhi, Varanasi, Allahabad, Kanpur and Agra.
The report is based on air pollution data – Particulate Matter (PM) 10 levels – collated from the Central and State Pollution Control Boards.
The report added that Delhi and all these 15 cities in Uttar Pradesh were found to have PM 10 levels much more than the global permissible limit of 20 micro-grams per cubic meter (as per World Health Organisation standards) and 60 (as per Indian standards).
Apart from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, the states of Rajasthan and Maharashtra in the west and Bihar in the east are the places where children are “worst affected.”
“Together these states are home to 12.9 million children, who are below or up to five years of age, trapped in bad air exceeding by more than twice the annual standard,” the report said, in what is claimed to be alarming.
The Indian government has not reacted to the report.
The Bayelsa State Government says paucity of funds and road construction activities within Yenagoa, the state capital, are responsible for it’s inability to provide safe-drinking water for residents.
Seriake Henry Dickson, Governor of Bayelsa State
Commissioner for Water Resources, Mr Nengi Tuobonah, stated this in Yenagoa on Monday, January 29, 2018 during an inter-ministerial news briefing.
He, however, said the government has been trying to alleviate the suffering of the people by providing water through tankers at 20 strategic locations in the capital, at N20 per 20-litre container.
The commissioner assured that residents of Yenagoa and other selected cities in the state would enjoy potable water at the end of the first quarter of the year.
He said that the government had paid its counterpart funding of N42 million for the tripartite intervention by donor agencies, including World Bank, European Union and UNICEF, to provide potable water for residents.
“By the end of the first quarter of the year, everybody, every household and every family living in Yenagoa metropolis, water will be reticulated to their door steps by the grace of God.
“The World Bank will contract its project by the mid of February, and by the end of the first quarter of the year, I believe those contracts will be concluded; so, our people should expect water by their door steps,” he said.
Namibia on Monday, January 29, 2018 opened a laboratory for testing food for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), which is said to be the first in the Southern African country.
Namibian Higher Education, Training and Innovation Minister, Itah Kandjii-Murangi
The Higher Education, Training and Innovation Minister, Itah Kandjii-Murangi, opened the laboratory, designed by the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology in Windhoek.
Kandjii-Murangi said the laboratory would play a crucial role in testing genetically modified products.
He added: “GMO testing is crucial to ensure that only GMOs and GMO products that are approved for use in Namibia are in the market.”
According to Kandjii-Murangi, the laboratory will also play a role in building local capacity through research, producing professors and researchers in the field of biotechnology.
The minister noted that, by building local food safety assessment capacity, Namibia would be in a better position to make informed decisions on the standard of food produced or imported through an evidence-based approach.
She further said that Namibia suffered misinformation on GMOs because of the lack of detection capacity and training in biotechnology.
Kandjii-Murangi urged universities, the food industry and pharmacies to utilise the laboratory.
The number of companies forging ahead with an industry-leading approach to tackling emissions in the supply chain has doubled in a year,according to new research by CDP, the non-profit global environmental disclosure platform, with analysis provided by McKinsey & Company.
Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, wrote the foreword in the report
CDP has awarded 58 companies – out of a total of +3,300 – a place on its second annual Supplier Engagement leader board, double the 29 identified in 2017. These leaders – which include Bank of America, BT Group, Nestlé, Panasonic, Rolls Royce, Société Générale, Tokyo Gas Co. and Unilever – are recognised for their work with suppliers to reduce emissions and lower environmental risks in the supply chain.
The leaders are announced as more companies than ever before are looking at water security in their supply chains – leading to a 15% rise in suppliers disclosing water data to their customers through CDP in 2017 – and organisations including Klabin, L’Oréal and McDonald’s are among the first to work with CDP to tackle deforestation in their supply chains.
Examples of leadership among the 58 companies include:
Ajinomoto: the Japanese food, chemicals and pharmaceuticals corporation worked with a key supplier to become the only company worldwide to sell drinks in 100% recycled heat-resistant PET bottles, reducing the use of virgin plastics from fossil fuels by around 2,000 tonnes a year.
Kellogg Company: the global food company operates its Origins programme across 21 countries, supporting around 294,000 farmers to become more sustainable and build resilience to the impacts of climate change.
Sky: in partnership with a key supplier, the European entertainment and telecommunications company is pioneering a circular economy model for its new set-top box, using sustainable product design to create a closed loop system with zero waste to landfill.
Gabrielle Ginér, Head of Sustainable Business Policy at BT Group, said: “We’re proud to be recognised on CDP’s Supplier Engagement leader board for our efforts to engage suppliers on climate change. Reducing our supply chain emissions is an essential component of our ambitious science-based target to help keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C. Working with suppliers through CDP’s supply chain programme is crucial to driving this change.”
Closing the Gap: Scaling up sustainable supply chain practices, CDP’s Global Supply Chain Report 2018, is based on climate, water and deforestation-related data collected from 4,872 supplying companies across global supply chains at the request of 99 of the world’s largest purchasing organisations. Wielding a combined purchasing power in excess of $3 trillion, these organisations include Accenture, BT Group, Cisco, KMPG UK and Philips Lighting.
Last week’s discussions at Davos concerning international trade – which is projected to grow fourfold by 2050, from a baseline year of 2010 – and the World Economic Forum’s recently published Global Risks Report 2018 – which confirmed environmental risks as the most significant facing humanity – has all highlighted the importance of addressing supply chains when tackling environmental challenges. This is especially significant because greenhouse gas emissions located in the supply chain are on average four times higher than those arising from direct operations.
“Delivering on the ambitions of the Paris Agreement will require businesses to play a key role to reduce emissions, manage water resources and limit deforestation within their operations and their supply chains,” commented Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, who has written the foreword in the report.
“I am pleased to see that an ever-increasing number of companies reporting to CDP are integrating sustainability-thinking into their business models and applaud the members of the CDP supply chain program for being pioneers in this regard. I encourage businesses to work with suppliers to raise ambition across their supply chain.”
The report – which includes commentary from The Carbon Trust – reveals that this leadership is paying dividends, as awareness of climate change-related risks and opportunities is increasing down the supply chain. Over three quarters (76%) of suppliers responding to CDP have identified some inherent climate change risks to their business and more than half (52%) report that they have integrated climate change into their business strategy.
There is huge potential for positive impact. Reductions equivalent to 551 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide – more than Brazil’s total emissions in 2016 – were reported by suppliers worldwide in 2017. This is an increase from 434 million metric tonnes reported in 2016. Cost savings amounting to $14 billion were reported in 2017 as a result of emissions reduction activities.
Yet, this impact is only a fraction of what could be achieved if all organisations at each tier of the supply chain were engaged and working to drive down emissions. Currently, less than a quarter (23%) of supplier respondents are in turn engaging with their own suppliers to reduce emissions, suggesting that many may be missing out on business opportunities and financial savings.
Dexter Galvin, Global Director of Corporates and Supply Chains at CDP, said: “Big businesses have for some time understood the importance of managing their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, but Scope 3 emissions, hidden in the value chain – and far greater in volume – are just as vital. While it’s encouraging that awareness of climate-related risk is filtering down the supply chain, it’s crucial that engagement and action follows. As our findings show, this not only makes sound business sense, but can result in considerable cost savings for both purchasing organisations and their suppliers.”
In addition to a global analysis, the report looked more closely into eight major economies to compare how well-prepared suppliers are to mitigate environmental risk. It found that suppliers in some countries are taking a clear lead, while others are lagging behind:
France: Reflecting the national momentum signalled at the recent One Planet Summit in Paris, supplying companies in France are the most likely to have climate change integrated into their business (80%), while 74% report board-level responsibility for climate change
Japan: Despite the government’s historic focus on energy security over climate change, Japanese companies have the highest rates of disclosure – 87% of suppliers responded to the CDP climate change questionnaire – and are the most likely to set emissions reduction targets (77%).
United States: The US administration might be withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, but American corporates are saying ‘We are Still In’ and stepping up on climate: 33% of organisations on the Supplier Engagement leader board are US, making it the best-represented nation, ahead of the UK at 15%.
Brazil: Abundant in national resources, but plagued by economic and political instability, Brazil has the lowest level of target setting (just 21% of respondents have set emissions reduction targets and a mere 8% have set renewable energy targets) and only 6% of supplying companies are engaging with their own suppliers on climate change.
China: While it has above-average disclosure rates for Scope 1 and 2 emissions – awareness of which will likely be bolstered by the recently announced national emissions trading system – only 15% of Chinese respondents are engaging with their own suppliers on the issue.
Steven Swartz, a partner in the McKinsey & Company Southern California office, said: “We’re seeing investors and businesses placing substantial capital into the low-carbon economy, driven by the expectation of sound long-term economics. This is a major opportunity for businesses to take the lead, and an especially good time for them to have impact as cost of clean technology continues to fall.”
African leaders on Monday, January 29, 2018 made a landmark commitment to remove nutrition-related barriers that prevent children and societies from realising their full potential.
The leaders have agreed to jointly overcome malnutrition and elevate nutrition as driver for economic growth and sustainable development
The leaders made the commitments at the launch of African Leaders for Nutrition (ALN) − an initiative championed by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the African Union Commission (AUC) – in Addis Ababa, where they agreed to jointly overcome malnutrition and elevate nutrition as driver for economic growth and sustainable development.
According to the President of the AfDB, Akinwumi Adesina, stunted children today will lead to stunted economies tomorrow. The impact of stunting is irreversible, but preventable.
Poor nutrition is responsible for stunting children’s growth, harming children’s educational development and future economic prospects. In 2016, 59 million African children suffered from stunting and 14 million suffered from wasting. Combined together, this is more than the population of France, more than the population of South Africa and seven times the population of Switzerland, Adesina warned.
“There’s every reason to care: poor nutrition is the main cause of death for millions of children under five. Indeed, three million children die every year in Africa from malnutrition. If current trends continue to 2030, Africa will have lost a mind boggling 36 million children because they didn’t have enough to eat or to eat well enough.”
The African Union has endorsed the African Leaders for Nutrition initiative and encouraged its champions to continue to dialogue and strengthen advocacy efforts in support of improved nutrition.
The Prime Minister of Lesotho, Motsoahae Thomas Thabane, read the resolution of African leaders on the ALN initiative, where they agreed that food security without improved nutrition will not deliver the desired inclusive socio-economic outcomes − especially as the number of those affected by hunger and malnutrition has not decreased over the past few years.
The declaration commended Member States who have made progress in ending child stunting and addressing underweight children and encouraged others to do the same.
“Nutrition is at the heart of our continental agenda and is a developmental issue. Nutrition security remains critical to all ongoing programmes and has a positive impact on development. Working together, we can make a difference,” said the Chair of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, in a statement at the event.
President Adesina described Africa as the only region where the number of stunted children has increased, from 47 million in 1990 to 59 million in 2016.
“There is both a moral and economic obligation on us to resolve this utterly preventable African disaster. Africa can defeat stunting and malnutrition if its leaders align and leverage their combined will,” he told African leaders.
“So, today, I speak for the victims of the silent killer of life: malnutrition. God did not create kids’ stomachs to be empty. Nothing breaks our hearts more than a mother unable to calm the rumbling, hollow stomach of her hungry baby. A proverb in my Yoruba language says, ‘Elders cannot be in the marketplace and watch the heads of babies hang lose when strapped to the mothers back’.”
To the leaders, he said: “You are the elders. You cannot watch as three million babies die from malnutrition on the backs of equally malnourished mothers. We all need to hear the voices of these mothers and children and act without delay!”
He described ‘grey matter infrastructure’ as Africa’s most important infrastructure and stressed the determination of the African Development Bank to help Africa feed itself and become self-sufficient in food: nutritious food.
“The African Leaders for Nutrition initiative will keep a report card, an Africa Nutrition Accountability Score Card, which will rate countries scientifically on their progress in addressing malnutrition and building grey matter infrastructure. This policy innovation will build incentive to complement and strengthen the commitment. To achieve greater impacts on nutrition, governments should prioritise nutritional investments, through Nutrition-Sensitive Budgeting.”
The President of Madagascar, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, who presented an African Union Commission’s study on the Cost of Hunger in Africa (COHA), described malnutrition as one of the main barriers that prevent children and societies from realising their full potential.
“Stunted children fall ill more frequently – generating high health costs to families and the economy equivalent to between 1-30% of the total public budget allocated to health, or 3% of GDP. If we reduce current stunting rates by 50% by 2025, we can expect a saving of $21.7 billion; if we achieve the AU Malabo goal of reducing stunting to 10% and underweight children to 5% by 2025, we can expect a saving of up to $39.3 billion,” he said.
The first release of surveillance data on antibiotic resistance by the World Health Organisation (WHO) reveals high levels of resistance to a number of serious bacterial infections in both high- and low-income countries.
Dr Marc Sprenger, director of WHO’s Antimicrobial Resistance Secretariat
WHO’s new Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System (GLASS) reveals widespread occurrence of antibiotic resistance among 500,000 people with suspected bacterial infections across 22 countries.
The most commonly reported resistant bacteria were Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pneumoniae, followed by Salmonella spp. The system does not include data on resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis (TB), as WHO has been tracking it since 1994 and providing annual updates in the “Global tuberculosis” report.
Among patients with suspected bloodstream infection, the proportion that had bacteria resistant to at least one of the most commonly used antibiotics ranged tremendously between different countries – from zero to 82%. Resistance to penicillin – the medicine used for decades worldwide to treat pneumonia – ranged from zero to 51% among reporting countries. And between 8% to 65% of E. coli associated with urinary tract infections presented resistance to ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat this condition.
“The report confirms the serious situation of antibiotic resistance worldwide,” says Dr Marc Sprenger, director of WHO’s Antimicrobial Resistance Secretariat.
“Some of the world’s most common – and potentially most dangerous – infections are proving drug-resistant,” adds Sprenger. “And most worrying of all, pathogens don’t respect national borders. That’s why WHO is encouraging all countries to set up good surveillance systems for detecting drug resistance that can provide data to this global system.”
To date, 52 countries (25 high-income, 20 middle-income and seven low-income countries) are enrolled in WHO’s Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System. For the first report, 40 countries provided information about their national surveillance systems and 22 countries also provided data on levels of antibiotic resistance.
“The report is a vital first step towards improving our understanding of the extent of antimicrobial resistance. Surveillance is in its infancy, but it is vital to develop it if we are to anticipate and tackle one of the biggest threats to global public health,” says Dr Carmem Pessoa-Silva, who coordinates the new surveillance system at WHO.
Data presented in this first GLASS report vary widely in quality and completeness. Some countries face major challenges in building their national surveillance systems, including a lack of personnel, funds and infrastructure.
However, WHO is supporting more countries to set up national antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems that can produce reliable, meaningful data. GLASS is helping to standardise the way that countries collect data and enable a more complete picture about antimicrobial resistance patterns and trends.
Solid drug resistance surveillance programmes in TB, HIV and malaria have been functioning for many years and have helped estimate disease burden, plan diagnostic and treatment services, monitor the effectiveness of control interventions, and design effective treatment regimens to address and prevent future resistance. GLASS is expected to perform a similar function for common bacterial pathogens.
The rollout of GLASS is already making a difference in many countries. For example, Kenya has enhanced the development of its national antimicrobial resistance system; Tunisia started to aggregate data on antimicrobial resistance at national level; the Republic of Korea completely revised its national surveillance system to align with the GLASS methodology, providing data of very high quality and completeness; and countries such as Afghanistan or Cambodia that face major structural challenges have enrolled in the system and are using the GLASS framework as an opportunity for strengthening their AMR surveillance capacities. In general, national participation in GLASS is seen as a sign of growing political commitment to support global efforts to control antimicrobial resistance.
The need for a global surveillance system was highlighted by WHO in 2014 in the “Antimicrobial resistance global report on surveillance”.
In October 2015, WHO launched the Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System (GLASS) working closely with WHO Collaborating Centres and existing antimicrobial resistance surveillance networks and based on the experience of other WHO surveillance programmes. For example, TB drug resistance surveillance has been implemented in 188 countries over the past 24 years. HIV drug resistance surveillance started in 2005 and by 2017, over 50 countries had reported data on pretreatment and acquired resistance using standardised survey methods.
Any country, at any stage of the development of its national antimicrobial resistance surveillance system, can enrol in GLASS. Countries are encouraged to implement the surveillance standards and indicators gradually, based on their national priorities and available resources.
GLASS will eventually incorporate information from other surveillance systems related to antimicrobial resistance in humans, such as in the food chain, monitoring of antimicrobial consumption, targeted surveillance projects, and other related data.
Professor of Geography with the Kaduna State University (KASU), Prof. Bala Dogo, on Monday, January 29, 2018 called for massive awareness campaign to enlighten the public on the negative impact of climate change.
Dr Peter Tarfa, Director, Department of Climate Change (DCC) in the Federal Ministry of Environment
Dogo, who made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna, said that the awareness campaign was crucial to mitigating the impact of climate change.
He called on relevant government agencies, nongovernmental organisations and other stakeholders to focus more on awareness creation, particularly in rural areas to efficiently manage climate change.
According to him, human activities in the environment to a great deal, impact negatively on the climate, as such people should be mobilized to stop activities that may lead to climate change.
He identified human activities like, deforestation, bush burning, building of houses and felling of tress for firewood among factors contributing to climate change.
“The impact of climate change is very visible from drying up rivers, to desertification and changes in weather condition with adverse effect on agricultural production and human health.
“As you might have noticed, rivers and streams of yesterday are either dry or have become ponds, speeding desert encroachment, particularly in Northern part of the country and gully erosion in Southern part of the country.
“Not only that, climate change affects grazing of cattle due to the disappearance of grasses and forest due to shortage of rainfall and human activity,’’ he said.
Dogo called on people to have a change of attitude toward the environment by planting trees and reducing the use of firewood for cooking.
“We can positively impact on our environment if we can change our attitude from cutting down trees to planting of trees and using the right energy like solar energy that is not toxic to the environment.
“The Government must also play its role of instituting environmental friendly policies, particularly restricting gas flaring and other industrial emissions to help manage the ongoing changes in the climate,’’ the professor said.
The Director-General, Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Sani Mashi, says the agency increased the number of its weather stations from 53 to 100 in 2017 through collaboration with some Nigerian universities.
Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of NiMet, Prof. Sani Mashi
Mashi, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, January 28, 2018, said that NiMet also overhauled and upgraded about 36 weather stations belonging to those universities.
According to him, the major interests of the universities are teaching and research while the interest of NiMet is generating data that will facilitate national assignment.
“We took the option of partnering with institutions so that instead of going for brand new stations, we collaborated with educational institutions that already have these stations but are in poor shape.
“When we entered into partnership with the institutions, we completely overhaul and upgrade those stations and now we have established a joint ownership between NiMet and those universities.
“They are posting their staff and we can jointly manage those stations and any data we get we can adjust the data after subjecting it to certain processes.
“Through that way we have established a total of 36 brand new stations within the country which means our stations have now increased to 100 from 52.
“This is phase one and we are moving to the phase two because we have over 100 universities in the country.
“Our target is that we will cover all the universities after which we will go to polytechnics, then Colleges of Education and then to all Senior Secondary Schools,’’ he said.
On internally generated revenue (IGR), Mashi said that it had always been the traditional source of funding for the agency, which according to him has been affected by recession.
“Like you know the main source of our funding are usually from the ticket sale, landing charges and then the other charges over data that NiMet is producing.
“The actual sources have really gone down, it means effectively that revenue has also gone down but we have aggressively improved our system of selling data within the agency.
“What we have done is to increase the tempo because, before it takes time to respond to request for data by users but now it has been made very effective.
“We have given it like a presidential order that any request that comes must be responded to within one or two weeks.
“Through that way we have been able to satisfy the needs of customers and it has significantly increased our revenue earning from the sale of data to those that are interested in it,’’ he said.
Mashi said that NiMet had decided to improve on its infrastructure in 2018 through private investors’ involvement as well as diversifying into other sectors of the economy other than aviation.
On the use of mobile phone to broadcast weather information, Mashi said the agency had already secured approval from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and contacted telecom operators.
He said that NiMet could not commence the mobile met application because it lacked the infrastructure to transmit directly to mobile phone users.
According to the D-G, the agency has concluded the feasibility study on potential users based on the advice of the operators who it is expected to enter into partnership with.
NAN recalls that NiMet had in 2017 announced its plan to allow weather information get to a large number of Nigerians through mobile as part of its efforts to enhance its revenue base.
The Catholic Bishop of Awka Diocese, Most Rev. Paulinus Ezeokafor, has called for an end to stigmatisation and discrimination against victims of leprosy.
Catholic Bishop of Awka Diocese, Most Rev. Paulinus Ezeokafor
Ezeokafor made the call while presenting some items to victims of leprosy as part of activities to mark the 2018 World Leprosy Day at the Leprosy Settlement, Oji-River in Enugu State on Sunday, January 28, 2018.
Some of the items donated include bags of rice, mattresses, mats, cartons of noodles, tubers of yam and crutches.
The cleric, who described stigmatisation and discrimination against leprosy victims as “unfortunate” also urged the Enugu State Government to resettle victims cured of the disease with their families.
“It is unfortunate that in spite of recent developments in medicine and health education about leprosy, people still do not understand that they can be cured of the disease permanently and be integrated into the society.
“They see the external signs and think it is not over. Leprosy can be cured and once cured, it is cured.
“This question of their continuous stay here as a result of stigmatisation makes no meaning of life,” the bishop said.
Ezeokafor, who noted that the children of the leprosy victims were free from the disease called for more support to fund their education.
In his remark, Mr Emmanuel Omeke of the Tuberculosis, Buruli Ulcer and Leprosy Unit of General Hospital, Oji-River said the settlement was still faced with challenges of routine drugs.
“It is true that German Leprosy and Tuberculosis Relief Association supply free leprosy drugs, but other routine drugs for treatment of malaria and other ailments are lacking for treatment of the victims,” he said.
Responding, the Chairman of the Leprosy Settlement, Mr Benjamin Udenze, commended the Catholic Bishop for the gesture, noting that the centre currently had over 140 members.
Udenze also commended the bishop for sustaining a scholarship scheme for 22 children of the settlement for15 years.
The chairman said the donations from the cleric as well as from other donors would go a long way to relieve them of their sufferings.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that other donors were Obijackson Foundation, Omex Global, the Anglican Church, Enugu Diocese and other individuals also made separate presentations to the victims.
