MADAM MAYOR PLEASE CLEAR ABANDONED CARS FROM OUR STREETS
Hello madam Mayor of the Sun. How are you getting on with your TRANSFORM FREETOWN project? We are always praying for you to succeed because when that happens we will all enjoy living in a tidy and efficient Freetown. We see a lot of stuff on social media from you SPIN TEAM. They are doing well especially with people who live abroad and those that live in Freetown but for obvious reasons close their eyes to the reality of life in our city.
The social media pictures in the last few months did not capture that raw sewerage that was flowing in at least FOUR locations in central Freetown. Congratulations for dealing with that eventually, well just as things were reaching crisis point.
Today we want to call attention to the many cars abandoned in many locations in this our great city. We are quite sure you see them daily to and from work. Otherwise we feel obliged, as good residents of your city to draw your attention once again to PADEMBA ROAD – CAMPBELL STREET JUNCTION at the entrance to PWD. That place is a REAL MESS. Do your people actually collect tax from those petty traders who are illegally occupying that space? See how many cars have been abandoned in that little space - not even half a football pitch in size.
We also want you to visit the whole area around YWCA, leading to the swimming pool gate of the stadium. Cars have been abandoned there for years and men are busy pouring urine freely around them. Surely, clearing that mess is part of the TRANSFORM FREETOWN idea.
So here is how you get this job done our dear Mayor of the SUN: have a meeting with SLRSA and then make a public announcement for two weeks to urge the owners of those vehicles to clear them, then move in and take them to a temporary holding area. Wait for another two weeks if nobody shows up to pay the cost of towing their rotten cars, dump the lot in the many scrapyards in the city.
SLRSA should only charge small money for that job because you are both responsible for this.
HANDLING TAPALAPA BREAD IN FREETOWN: OUR CONCERNS
Many Sierra Leoneans are now hooked on TAPALAPA bread. It’s one of the many things Sierra Leoneans brought over from Guinea at the end of the war and it serves many people in the low income bracket very well but it is precisely for that reason that we are very concerned about the way those who bake or sell this bread go about their business.
We call on those tasked with keeping our food chain healthy to go to the Hillside by-pass road and spend just FIFTEEN minutes watching the TAPALAPA sellers at the junction of that small road leading to MODEL SCHOOL. Please do so around midday when those people arrive fresh from the bakery
Firstly, whatever attempt they make to appear to cover the stuff is just complete nonsense. They actually believe that exposing the stuff attracts potential customers. In fact it turns away people like us because the very area they occupy is unhygienic. But that’s just one issue. The second one is that the sellers play with the bread with their bare hands throughout. For example when customers approach them to buy, they are either allowed to select the bread with their bare hands or the sellers themselves do it. Surely there has to be a better way of handling what we eat.
In times like these when viruses are all over the place killing people the bread sellers who never wash their hand as regularly as they should even in normal times are probably sending people to Connaught Hospital every week. So why can’t we clean up the TAPALAPA trade that has spread all over Sierra Leone?
APPROACHING ANOTHER RAINY SEASON AND FBC ROAD STILL A MESS
Is there any excuse left in the books now for SLRA regarding their handling of the road running through Fourah Bay College campus? We think there is nothing more to say. All they can do now is to accept that the FBC road is not their priority despite that fact that the road is so important because of the thousands of university students who use it daily to and from school and the big politicians and civil servants and hundreds of commuters from the mountain villages who use it to enter central Freetown.
In the first few months of this rainy season, that road will be washed away. We hate to sound like prophets of doom but we don’t how else to drive this message home that if by the end of March nothing is doing on that road, we should expect anything when the rains set in. And we should note for good measure that some of the worst taxis are on that route driving our children up and down the hill. Many of those vehicles are rickety, unlicensed and the drivers are some of the most reckless. They operate beyond the control of SLRSA Wardens at Model Junction.
We will not be dealing with this topic in this way until we get to the point where we will be able to say to SLRA that WE TOLD YOU SO.
SO HOW WAS VALENTINE’S DAY?
Another Valentine’s Day jamboree is come and gone. We want to know particularly from our young readers how they spent the day. They are the most active on such days. We certainly hope it went well. We saw social media Valentine flowers flying all over the place backed by genuine and indeed fake expressions of love – just the sort of things that happen on social media.
We feel really sad that nobody did something about the heavy commercialization of the whole affair targeting our children in secondary schools. We particularly called attention to what was happening outside the gates of FSSG. Apart from the normal chaotic mix of traders and criminals nears that school, Valentine traders also came over to target children there and those in neighboring Saint Joseph’s.
We will concentrate a bit more on the cesspit vehicles, ATAYA SELLERS, tyre service people and petty traders on that side of Hannah Benka-Coker Street in the coming weeks. We think they are not good neighbors to one of our great schools in Sierra Leone. They should leave. The struggle will not be easy. Things will be politicized easily because some old time Party Pikins who live just up the road will feel the clean up will eventually reach them. In this situation we have no interest in the area around RED headquarters.
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