Council to sanction institutions over noncompliance with guidelines

The Registrar of the Environmental Health Officers Registration Council, Dr. Dominic Abonyi, has warned that institutions training environmental health officers who fail to index their graduate stand the risk of being sanctioned by law.

Dr Abonyi said all accredited institutions must submit the list of their students as soon as they are admitted for indexing as no student would graduate without council indexing as their data must be captured at the point of entry.

According to a statement, Dr Abonyi stated this at the 6th annual convention of the National Association of Environmental Health students of Nigeria held recently in Ebonyi State.

The registrar while delivering his speech titled, ‘Branding and Promoting Environmental Health, the Essence of Professional Ethics and Expertise’, posited that to brand and promote environmental health as a profession, there must be a clear direction in the areas of ethics and expertise.

He however, advised all cadres (professionals and sub-professionals) to form associations at national and states levels for optimum professionalism in the field/practice of environmental health in Nigeria.

He assured on ensuring the establishment of an umbrella body for all cadres which will be named ‘environmental health practitioners of Nigeria’, adding that all cadres are expected to comply with the directives i.e. officers, technologist, technicians and assistants respectively.

The student body however appealed to the council to assist in areas of training and retraining of environmental health officers for international best practices, the availability and accessibility of uniform issuance and also ease conditions for licensing after council certification examination.