National Cleaning – a thing of a joke
There’s a well known slogan ”cleanliness is next to Godliness” and I personally subscribe to that school of thought. In human history, we can’t afford to shy away from the divineness of cleanliness…
A few weeks ago in the month of March, the government of Sierra Leone backed by Freetowjn City Council declared national cleaning day, ”tagged: cleaning day” in the second Saturday of March 2011,after a long time of city dirtiness.
And it was unanimously welcomed by the general public, as everyone stays at home for the cleaning exercise including civil servants. Before the cleaning day was declared by the government, there were hypes of refuse in most hidden parts of the city.
Before the declarations of the national cleaning day it was well known and obvious that the city was really dirty and yearning for cleaning activities.
What makes the whole joke of the cleaning exercise is the inability of the City Council to work in consonance with the cleaning exercise/activities. Before now, some amount of sanitarian trucks were imported/brought into the country to help champion the course of keeping the entire city clean, in light of these, a huge amount of money was fabulously spent on the purchase of those trucks. But sooner than expected, the trucks are no more seen in the city doing the fundamental duties in which there were bought for…
After the cleaning exercise, we were left with the paradox of the whole show, leaving the entire city with the hypes of refuse all over the place, for example the center of Regent Road by Circular Road, the main Kissy road that lead to Up-gun, at the center road of Fourah Bay road by Dove-cot market and at the main center of Dove-cot Road; on Friday 1st of April 2011,4 to 5 hypes of huge refuse were still mounted at the center of Dove-cot road, coursing no-car-go-area for almost four weeks, by the time of this publication.
As a result of this, the main road of Dove-cot market was used as a petty traders temporal shop, pending when the city cleaning agents will wake up to their responsibilities of evacuating the gigantic hypes of refuse all over the main city, not just the Dove-cot street/road alone.
The effect of these hypes of refuse in the city, since the gathered dirt was dumped almost in the center of the main road, is causing a lot of ”stand-still traffic” that almost cripples the economic activities in the country. Now one may ask where is the reality of City Council to keep the entire city clean? What actually has eaten up the equipment bought by the state City Council to aid keep our country free of dirtiness? In life we know we can’t build something on nothing. How can the city be kept clean without the City Council waking up to its fundamental responsibilities in which it was was formed?
What we as a general public expect from the city council; is to put in sound working and viable mechanisms in place in the course of the cleaning exercise so that while the general public responds to the cleaning activities the city will not be left with the eyesore of stinking garbage of dirty refuse all over the city.
What we expect from the city council in a time like this is to order the state cleaning agents with their gadgets (trucks, shovels and caterpillar) to evacuate the refuse while the cleaning is still going on, by so doing it will save us the unnecessary traffic that occurs in the process of clearing the hypes of refuse after the exercise has come to a close already.
Time has finally come for the City Council to wake up to its responsibilities, if really the dream of President Ernest Bai koroma to keep the city clean is to be achieved.
As a of matter fact and urgency, the 50th independence anniversary is around the corner; and we must not celebrate it in dirtiness, so all hands must be on deck to work out measures that will facilitate City Council to be at its best to keep the entire country, not just Freetown alone, clean for the golden celebrations of our country, ”Sierra Leone”.
In as much we are ready to welcome the call for keeping the city clean, we must not also mix matters, the timeframe of the cleaning exercise will also be considered, since 80 percent of Sierra Leone’s population lives by daily economic and commercial activities; in the course of this opinion I suggest 7am to 11am should be enough time for the exercise, so that normal economic activities can bounce back to action.
N’gardi Lahai – SEM
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