Lagos plans to clamp down on illegal tank farms
The Lagos State Government is set to commence physical planning enforcement and to sanction all tank farms illegally operating in the state.
The Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development, Dr Idris Salako, announced during a recent meeting in Alausa and expressed displeasure at the unapproved and illegal operations of many tank farms in the state, adding that no such facility should operate without planning permit.
According to him, the indiscriminate operations of tank farms had negatively impacted the host communities and rendered residents helpless.
Salako lamented that in most cases, the road capacity is inadequate for the activities of the tank farms whose operations have led to the collapse of road infrastructure, rendered critical social amenities such as school and hospital inaccessible and created urban squalors of the host communities.
He pointed out the deliberate neglect of host communities by tank farms operating in the state, adding that most of the outfits creating the problems were not only unapproved but also not paying taxes to the government.
The Commissioner recalled that the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development had met with tank farm operators earlier in the year and had given a week’s ultimatum for them to regularise their facilities, which was followed by an additional two-week ultimatum, a month after the first ultimatum.
He vowed that there was no going back on the plan to start enforcing the extant physical planning laws on all erring tank farms as from the following week since the ultimatums given had lapsed.
