FCT suya sellers raise alarm over harassment

Producers of different categories of roasted meat popularly known as suya in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Tuesday, said they are facing various harassments from FCT environmental officers as well as high charges by the operators of garden and other recreational parks, where they mostly transact their businesses.

FCT leader of the group, Alhaji Musa Sulaiman, raised the alarm during a chat with City News in Abuja.

He said FCT administration during the demolition era, had promised to allocate spaces, where they could carry out their businesses legally but regretted that the promise has not been fulfilled since the former FCT Minister, Nasir el-Rufa’i left office.

Sulaiman called for FCTA to come to their rescue by providing space for them in Abuja metropolis to stop them from operating by the road side, which he said, the authority has termed illegal.

“We can no longer bear the exploitation by garden operators, who charge us hundreds of thousands of naira with some of them charging above one N1million per annum for just attaching a kiosk inside their massive allocated land.

Most of us could not even approach such places, and as a result of that, we are being harassed by officials of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) for operating by the road sides. They would arrest our members, charge them before their mobile court and send them to Suleja prison, besides destroying their goods mercilessly,’’ he alleged.

An official of the AEPB’s Department of Health, who confirmed some of the arrests on condition of anonymity, insisted that any person, who sells consumable products, should operate from hygienic environment, legally approved by the authority.

He accused the suya sellers of mounting their spots on streets, while some of them operate on pedestrian roads close to the drainages, which according to him, is not good enough for human health.

The Public Relation Officer of the FCT Recreational Park and Garden, a department responsible for allocating and regulating gardens, parks and recreation areas in the FCT, said some of the business activities taking place at the gardens, are not permitted in the first place.

He said any issue involving suya producers and the garden operators should be better handled by themselves, saying that his department’s role is to regulate and not to interfere.