Raining cats and dogs …
Whilst it is blessing to have rain down pouring in tropical environments like ours, Sierra Leone’s artificial endowment has been a cause for disaster.
The capital of Freetown is hilly with catchments area settlers. The roads are sloppy – most emptying to the valley estuaries with seldom water channel falls built of asphalt culverts. This is evidenced when there are heavy downpours of torrential rain – the city is almost in flood situation.
Apart from the area catchments settlers on the hill-belt, a cross section also settles in the slums forming communities such as Susan’s Bay Wharf, Constantine Magazine, Moa Wharf, Kroobay, Kolleh Tong, Crab Tong, Olonshoro, J-Net and others around the historic river Rokel.
There are also beach fortes in the peninsular region of the capital comprising of Lakka, Aberdeen, Lumley, Murray town, Tombo, John Thorpe Mabureh, Kent and the others.
These areas are often affected when heavy flood hits Freetown during the rainy season. The tidal sea current and the pressure of draining water from the hillside gather forces with the springs to enhance water percolation and the road engineers are paying less attention to this.
Now the city is victim of both human and poor civil works engineering as water erosion is now a force contributing to killing humans in Freetown. A couple of deaths came to the register in Freetown, following the heavy rains on Thursday and Friday, leaving at least seven persons dead. Four were killed by a falling boulder at Kolleh slums in the Congo town area, including a five year old boy, and two were swept away at Dwazak and one at Olonshoro. Also a car was swept to the shore with the driver in it at Kaningo Juba area in the night of Thursday while making attempt to drive through the main street leading to Juba.
The city is attracted to the synonym of being the hub center of doing business. On this backdrop, a lot of settlers prefer to congest even in squalid areas to make a means to their livelihood.
The government is now keeping the pressure on the civil works engineers to have a re-do of the roads and see to all the faults highlighted in this piece earlier. What remains a herculean task is the issue on how to relocate the two categories of settlers from these usual habitats.
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