By Saio Marrah
Ms. Seray Kabba a Mayoral candidate for Freetown in the upcoming elections has at the 2023 Mayoral Debate claimed that outgone Mayor, Yvonne Aki-Swayer’s administration failed to tackle issues of sanitation in the capital city during her tenure of office.
Ms. Kabba was putting forward her argument as an Independent Candidate at the debate organised by Sierra-Eye Magazine and the Institute for Legal Research and Advocacy for Justice (ILRAJ) held at the Lagoonda Complex, Freetown on Saturday 3rd June 2023.
Seray dismissed claims by Aki-Sawyer that the garbage situation got only worse in the city when she left office saying she [Seray] had personally facilitated the cleaning of several market areas at the time the mayor was still in office.
She mentioned various trading spots in Freetown like Dove Cut, Lumley, Bombay, and Peace Market, that she said were inundated with garbage when she went on a cleaning exercise with her team.
“FCC failed us woefully in terms of sanitation,” she stated.
The independent candidate said she had never seen garbage bins on the streets of Freetown and explained how in most cases youths around market areas had to mobilize themselves to clean, some paid by market women to do so.
“So sanitation is at zero… when it comes to Freetown,” she argued.
On the issue of public toilets, Ms. Kabba said most markets had none, and women in those markets had to use plastic bags to ease themselves. She said only Lumley and Magazine Markets have one toilet each and that those toilets were built by their market chairpersons, not by the FCC.
Ms. Kabba promised that if elected as mayor, in her first 90 days, she will solicit the involvement of everyone to clean their surroundings and ensure dust bins are placed everywhere.
She spoke about enforcing laws against littering in public places and promised to work with other partners to combat the issue of solid waste management.
She said she will introduce what she called a Landfill and will use garbage to produce electricity for the city.
On the issue of street trading, she said the two political parties are afraid to take traders off the street because they do not want to lose votes and promised to address the problem. She said she will initiate a system whereby sellers of specific items will be placed in designated places and promised to build public toilets and conducive marketplaces if elected.
Former mayor Aki-Sawyer in her argument said people have to change their mentality towards dumping garbage in the street and that change does not come overnight but takes a gradual process.
She said solid waste management is very expensive as vehicles that transport solid waste need fuel, while Sanitary Inspectors will have to be paid.
She explained that the FCC currently has over 589 staff accounting for 800 million Old Leones in monthly salaries before she left office in February this year.
Also on sanitary enforcement, she said the council added about 50 metropolitan police but pointed out that people are in the habit of dumping garbage in the gutters at night.
She pointed out that systems had been put in place but “systems can be sabotaged…but as long as you have mapped out the system they can be reinstituted and people can be energised for all and sundry to combat solid waste management together”.
Lilian Kamara another mayoral candidate representing the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP) promised to build more market structures.
Her second priority she said is to make water available to the city because according to her, most people especially children wake up as early as 3 to 4 a.m. to fetch water.
Road construction with proper gutters to avoid flooding in the city and prohibiting street garages are two other areas Kamara promised to address if voted into office.
Kassim Conteh representing the United Democratic Movement (UDM) said he will relocate the city’s main dumping site, Bummeh.
Of the eight party candidates vying for this position, four of them including the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) boycotted the event.
The moderator of the debate, BBC’s Umaru Fofana said as the organisers of the event have been conducting several debates for those running for public office, it is their desire to continue with the exercise so as to make it a permanent feature in the governance system in Sierra Leone.
He pointed out that the audience will decide the winner of the debate. Fofana pointed out that holding a debate for people running for public offices is more significant “not least because it engenders scrutiny, accountability by the people of those who they want to entrust their future”.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (07/06/23)
