When the brain fails, the body suffers
It is increasingly becoming clear that authorities at Freetown City Council are losing ideas by the minute.
Recently, Council came up with by-laws listing a number of offences punishable by the force of law. The offences range from littering the streets, (especially those in the centre of the city), selling in unauthorized locations, to parking vehicles in wrong places.
Honestly, these by-laws have never been effectively implemented because Council lacked the logistics; some say the political will, to ensure the public complied with Council’s rules and regulations which aimed at instilling some discipline in the behaviour of people and at the same time bringing sanity in the upkeep of the municipality.
It came to pass that many of the violators were drawn from the ruling party. Since Mayor George Herbert Williams would not dare offend his own people, it has only been a ‘borku tok’ affair.
In fact, some members of the public are just too defiant. It’s like people have lost faith in Council’s pronouncements and their ability to deliver. Council would say, for example, ‘don’t drop a piece paper here or there’, the people will litter the streets consciously or otherwise and with impunity too. Council would warn ‘don’t park a vehicle here or there’ a driver without looking back will park wherever he or she wants to park. Council will threaten anyone who converts a street into a garage, the threat goes in vein; someone is bound to fix his or her vehicle in the middle of the street.
The violations will go on and on and on. City council cannot do otherwise but to only groan and complain – a dog that knows how to bark but lacks the teeth to bite!
The fact of the matter is these by-laws are not effective because what should complement their implementation are either not adequate or do not just exist.
For example, telling people not to drop a piece of paper on the street without providing enough dustbins at every street corner would be like a man throwing water on a duck’s back.
You tell drivers not to park along the streets without providing parking spaces in the city would be like inviting a quarrel with the police. In fact, this is one essential service Council has failed to provide for motorists in the city. There has been total chaos when it comes to parking spaces in down town Freetown.
And the city mayor will sit in his Wallace Johnson Street office passing by-laws he knows will not work because he knows the facilities are not adequate or do not exist in the first place.
Let us take the case of cleaning the city. Those of us who reside in this ancient city are aware of the problems or discomfiture associated with cleaning Freetown. Apart from the chaos that accompanies every cleaning exercise in the form of traffic jams, etc, there is the inadequacy of equipment and personnel in carrying out the exercise. Consequently, rather than cleaning the city the exercise ends up transforming the city into a huge garbage dump. The city, especially the east end, becomes filthier than when the cleaning started.
That was probably the reason why the monthly Saturday cleaning was abandoned. It was observed the exercise was time and money consuming without any corresponding result.
Interestingly, having lost any positive idea as to how the accumulated filth in the city could be dealt with once and for all, City Council last week Saturday reintroduced the cleaning exercise in the name of making the city clean ahead of this country’s fiftieth independence anniversary on April 27. There was nothing new about the cleaning; no new initiative; the same old approach. The only deceptive approach was to give it some taste by initiating a launching ceremony which called ‘Pick a Plastic; which was later shamelessly transformed into a political party rally.
As in the past, the Saturday cleaning exercise only ended in total chaos with motorists and pedestrians caught up in the chaos. That aside, it took council and its partners almost another week to clear the rubbish with piles of garbage still evident in many places in the city. So why bother the people, why subject them to further inconvenience? Independence or no independence Freetown has defied any form of cleaning. This is a fact. As long as we continue to embrace street trading coupled with the congestion in the city, Council has a big task at hand.
On Thursday morning, 17th March, I almost laughed my guts out when I beheld the incredible sight: City Council workers, men and women, young and old, senior or junior staff, carrying brooms in their hands, in their white Lacoste or T-shirts sweeping the streets of Freetown.
Well done Council, well done Mayor Herbert George Williams, I said under my breath. But I went further to urge them to move on to Fourah Bay road, this time not with brooms but with shovels and trowels.
I was however cut off in my thoughts when a bystander turned to me and remarked: ‘it’s a mockery of self-gratification. Council wants the public to know that they are working,’ said the old man.
‘You see, young man,’ he continued, ‘when men have lost ideas they behave like chickens, scampering for attention’. The old man turned away and disappeared around the corner of Goderich Street.
I stood for a while pondering the meaning behind the old man’s remarks. Later I learnt from wise people that ‘when the brain fails the body suffers’. I clearly saw the wisdom behind those wise words. When senior staff members of council, old men and women who should be in their offices giving directives to their subordinates but are out in the streets clearing rubbish with brooms, then I knew brains have failed at Council, hence old men and women are forced to go out and do the job they are supposed to pay others to do.
Indeed, brains have failed to work at Council. Let their body suffer a little.
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