By Mabinty M. Kamara
I don’t know if I am the only one to have noticed that the noise level in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, has risen significantly in the last seven years or so. And my projection is that it can only get worse, much to the annoyance of many in this congested city.
My house is a 10-minute walk from the main highway in and out of a fast-growing suburban settlement outside of Freetown, called Grafton. In the early years after my family moved in, I would normally wake up to the chirping of all kinds of birds, the regular call to Muslim prayer, which as a Muslim I always look forward to, and the occasional barking of dogs in the distance and the early morning crow of a cock.
As more people continue to move into the area, building homes and opening businesses, the birds are gone, the barking by dogs has increased and the sounds of cars zooming in and out of the city, passing through the now busy road down the hill, the noise has become even louder – now it feels almost as if I was only a few metres away from the main highway.
These days, people have to deal with even more noise. And it's getting worse. Inevitably, I have to partly blame technology as I try to explain what I think is happening.
The sound of megaphones marketing various goods and services ranging from cooked rice to mobile phone recharge cards, the almost unnecessarily ceaseless honking of vehicle horns, loud sounds emanating from home theaters being put on test in shops, or loud music from restaurants and entertainment centers continuously fill the air in Freetown at any time of the day.
The magnitude
This situation is not limited to just my once quiet and serene Grafton village but right across the city and in some district headquarters towns of Sierra Leone. The moment we hear about pollution what comes to people’s mind is air and water pollution with little or no regard for noise pollution which has become the order of the day in Sierra Leone’s capital. Some people think it’s a normal thing. Sometimes it gets so frustrating and depressing that you begin to think about having the proverbial pinions of a dove to fly to the hills and be at rest.
“People no longer have regard for what other people feel or think. I barely have quality study time at home or even watch television after work or in the morning hours,” said Harold Williams, a resident of Sanders Street in Central Freetown. Williams blames the situation on the Freetown City Council for not being able to manage the city well. “This city is just chaotic, with noise everywhere, so is garbage disposal,” the 60-year-old said.
From his corner of Freetown, Williams must be familiar with the aggressive marketing techniques of people hawking everything from rat poison to bed bugs and mosquito repellants can be annoying and by the way, the information they provide is deceptive. They make dangerous medical claims in the full view of the Pharmacy Board and the Medical and Dental Association of Sierra Leone. The advertisements are boring and have become quite a nuisance. Let nobody tell me those hawkers do not have hundreds of clients. Otherwise, why are they still in business? Ordinary taxpayers like me have to pick up the bills for the damage they are causing when their victims turn up later at Connaught Hospital.
The cause
In all of this, much of the blame is now being put down to negligence by certain state institutions like the Freetown City Council charged with the responsibility of ensuring sanity in the city by instituting measures against indiscriminate garbage disposal and noise pollution. And there are laws in the books to make that possible.
In their feeble effort at noise control, council officials have been patrolling the central business district of Freetown to arrest mostly small businesses that have adopted the use of megaphones left over from the COVID-19 social mobilization drive and other Public address systems to advertise their businesses. But a lot of people we spoke to have described such efforts by the authorities as a mere publicity stunt that will not yield the desired results.
One of the affected traders shared his experience with us on how he was arrested by the Metropolitan Police who took away his Public Address system which he used to whet the appetite of movie lovers for movies copied onto Compact Discs (CDs.
The young man who introduced himself as Dauda Kamara said it was only through such aggressive marketing techniques that they can lure customers to buy from them in this ‘social media’ age where almost everything is shared directly online by either the producers or other agents. “It is only through such narration of certain scenes in the movie that we can get people interested to buy those plates (CDs) to watch. But then we have the city council police who would always chase and arrest us and we have to give them cash to release our speakers,” Kamara lamented.
He added that if you don’t pay them upfront and you are taken to the office, you risk paying a huge fine, enough to put you out of business.
In response to the claims from Kamara and other traders hawking wares along the streets of Freetown advertising their products through public address systems, the Public relations Officer of Freetown City Council Koma Hassan Kamara referred us to the Metropolitan Department of the FCC but as always, it is difficult to get them respond to such media inquiries.
Is technology to blame?
The Public Address System was an effective communication tool used in Sierra Leone and many other parts of especially Africa for social mobilization and awareness-raising about the dreadful COVID-19 pandemic building the EBOLA virus experience. Such is the beauty of technology though it is being misused by the public.
The public address system can get messages far and wide across the community or village without having to get people crammed into a room for fear of body contact and the likely spread of contagious diseases. As a result of this advantage, a lot of development partners in Sierra Leone including NGOs started donating these appliances to community members making it accessible and affordable for many. Politicians also got in on the act. Now those devices are in the hands of the hundreds of hawkers in Freetown.
On the other hand, advertising, using a public address system is now becoming a public nuisance in Sierra Leone’s capital and its environs with little or no regard for other official engagements such as meetings and especially for us journalists whose work requires complete quietness and attention to produce the thoughts and stories you read on newspaper pages or receive through the airwaves.
I don’t know if this issue also affects other professionals but it is making life difficult for us in this part of the city and at this point we have to count on the appropriate authorities to address such a problem otherwise it can only get worse and eventually force those who can, to relocate deed into the peninsula which is a bit serene for now.
Anyway, how long would this serenity last, before this irritating circumstance with which the rest of the city is grappling finally hit them as it happened to my once quiet and serene Grafton village and its environs?
Copyright © 2024 Politico Online (12/04/24)
