Freetown could be described as one of the dirtiest cities in the world not just because of sporadic garbage dumps, dirty gullies full of mosquito infested stagnant waters from wash yards and toilets, mud heaps washed down by the rains but also street hackers and make-shift cookery huts built near government and private offices.
Nearly, every corner within the central business district is infested with a street trader, a shop or an umbrella/ table selling transit goods, telephone top-ups, needle & tread, arata dry, cherr money hackers, and nobody cares.
Drainages and sewage are narrow and home to rodents, cockroaches, bats and stray dogs causing leaks and stinking atmosphere along the main Siaka Stevens and Lightfoot Boston Streets, the seat of the Freetown Municipality offices.
Who should blame these stray dogs and rodents? They are our neighbours.
Just remember a short paragraph in one of our primary school reading books which cautions: “Be kind to Animals.”
Kindness is not extended to the city dwellers by the Freetown Municipality; they collect dues every day in millions of Leones, ride in vehicle mounted with loud speakers. “Don’t pack your cars here! No Street Trading, No Packing, Nor Pis Na Ya (don’t urinate here).
But all these are just located at the center of town. You never see these guys along New Castle Street at Kissy or Regent Road Lumley.
Indiscriminate shacks and very old tattered or badly built structures called shopping mulls along the main highways; selling junks and recycled dust bin articles.
Very disgusting sights my God! But this is Freetown You may wish to count with your one hand fingers the number of vehicles own to the whole municipality or any possesses of the sorts; or number of personnel; sanitary officers, garbage disposing equipment, safety gears, council houses, community centers, recreational centers, maintenance garages, public toilets, marriage centers, sub offices, effective municipal courts etc.
Practically, the Freetown Municipality is just another failed-state that dwells in a glass house always casting blames on the central government for lack of funding.
Indeed, they are right because the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and the All People’s Congress (APC) governments baby-sits them by dishing out subventions year in year out.
They are never audited and the sitting Mayor is fully a politician dancing to the tune of the presidency.
Now, the Bio government is even propelling their quest for money by dishing out Le 2.7 billion in the name of National Cleaning.
Just after the cleaning day, go along the main streets and suburbs, a stretch of plastic sachets, dead animals, crumps of left-over foodstuffs could be seen announcing themselves with outer stenches of smell.
Of course FREE MONEY INDEED. This money can be given to an organized setting that would be charged to clean the city.
But that is not the real intentions of government not even this newspaper; these exercises were meant to avoid flooding of the city during the rains and more importantly to drive off one of our notorious neighbour… THE MOSQUITO / MALARIA. So if somebody takes a bone out of it in this way, it is yet another fiasco.
Interestingly this sitting mayor of the opposition APC party is always under pressure from her political party stalwarts.
It is like they are cautioning not to effectively perform the mayoral duty but to do things that would bring down the sitting government.
What madness? And you will hear the citizens on the opposing side tell you that ‘’How will the mayor perform a better duty, eh?
The government is not giving them enough money to do the job’’
The sitting government on their part often snobs the mayor because the idea flows in the same direction.
What a shame? They, of course need to give the mayor lip service; because if you are not with us, then you are with them. So what?
Anyway, our purpose is not to judge but to critic for Attitudinal Change in the New Direction.
Municipalities are local governments which are granted powers to fend for themselves.
If your father cannot give you food at age 18, of course in Africa, why not find a way out, other than to subject to stealing or Borborizing? (kissing Asses)?
The Freetown municipality is capable of generating Le60 million every day if they are not inept or forward looking and strategic.
Take the market dues collection across the city as an example; there are close to 50,000 market places (shops, market women) in town each paying Le 1000 per day that equals Le 50,000,000 a day.
What about city rates for all houses in town, packing space, courts fines etc. So your guess is better than mine.
If the municipality administrators are not lazy, they first of all need to;
1. Divide the city into sub municipalities, eg Lumley, Kissy, Regent or Wilberforce City Councils
2. Build structures that may house Counselors and local chiefs
3. Bring down management of some local amenities such as sewage, garbage control units
4. Special local court system
5. Sub-administrative, revenue collection and coordinating office
6. Local citizens watch unit
7. Municipal forces
8. Traffic management units
9. Housing, educational, health and safety units
10.Markets, trading and labour exchange departments etc.
These arrangements must look like the one the central government has and would strike effective management.
We want to see this happen in our city eh?…. for eg I do not need to go to the police for simple
quarrels with my son or if I am verbally assaulted by a neighbour or if someone seduce a matured
girl child/ wife of a neighbour.
In most countries mayors graduate to presidential aspirants and they win elections because of their good work.