By Donstance Koroma
In an exclusive interview with the Deputy Environmental Officer at the Freetown City Council, Sorie Alpha Kamara, he informed The Nightwatch that the implementation of the Freetown City Council Transform Freetown Project has more questions than answers.
Sorie Alpha Kamara discloses that the Council lacks statistics and policy guidelines regarding stray dogs, adding that the Council is currently using the 2010 by-laws on the raising and control of wild animals inclusive of stray dogs.
Mr Kamara discloses further that, in partnership with the Animal Welfare Association of Sierra Leone, they sometimes embark on annual immunization of stray dogs within Freetown and its immediate environs with the aim of controlling them.
The Deputy Environmental Officer also states that Council is gravely concerned over the steady increase in paupers within Kissy Road and Mountain Cut Junction. He therefore calls on the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, and organizations dealing with street children, to work concertedly to come the aid of the countless paupers within the Freetown Municipality.
Mr Kamara accused these vulnerable set of people as responsible for depositing human waste in drainages along the Kissy Road and Mountain Cut Junction.
“Drainages within the Wilberforce Street, opposite the Freetown Central Mosque leading to the Bus Station are filled with human wastes”, avers Sorie Alpha Kamara.
The Deputy Environmental Officer continues that the increase in the size of the city’s population is proving challenging for them to manage the sanitation of the city and its residents.
Mr Kamara says homeless youths used market stalls as bedrooms and the drainages as their toilets. He also expresses dismay that many houses within the city are also without toilet facilities and have resorted to discharging their toilet pipes directly into main drainages.
He discloses to this medium that many culprits have been arrested and charged to court and that the houses in the city are so many that their limited staff capacity, which stands at stands at 35, is largely unable to police the city.
On why the forty (40) public toilets within the Municipality are not operating on a 24 hours basis, he says that the Council has a number of challenges such as security and water to make the facility operate on a 24 hours basis.
The FCC official also notes that physically challenged persons along Wilberforce, ECOWAS and Lightfoot Boston Streets use the main streets on Sundays to launder their clothes and other also attend to domestic activities.
Due to the increase of street trading, the effect of the four hundred and twenty two (422) sweepers in Freetown is less felt, he says.