By Isaac Massaquoi
I suspect that even the government will accept that last weekend’s national cleaning exercise achieved only mixed results and is definitely not the best way to keep Freetown, in particular, clean. On the eve of elections, it was a great public relations exercise also aimed at portraying the government as one that cares for its people. Dr Ernest Bai Koroma also played his part and of course the SLBC cameras were around and the president had a good day at work. Feel good.
Well, some will dismiss this as journalistic cynicism gone wacky. They’re probably right. The point is, to me the president’s appearance at an occasion like this always distracts from the main agenda. We had the odd sycophants jostling to catch the president’s eye; the overzealous young people wishing to get a few pennies from a president that has demonstrated many times that he could bring instant joy to anybody he meets on the road by chance and of course there will be those who will flock around out of curiosity. I can assure you all of those people we saw on TV, fall in one of those categories.
The national cleaning weekend has come and gone and I don’t know for how long but serious questions remain as to what can really be achieved in terms of the big agenda of maintaining a clean city and keeping our citizens safe from diseases like cholera. The weekend’s cleaning exercise made a real difference in certain places. I actually visited some of the worst corners in the west of Freetown and noticed some marked improvement. While we applaud that, we must return to the real question of how to sustain this and make it part of our culture. We must also ask the question, what to do about people who pile rubbish on the streets believing they can get away with anything as long as they profess to be members of the ruling party at any time.
The National Cleaning Day idea came from the populist NPRC military regime that ruled this country in the early to mid 90s and, as far as I can remember, it was never a call for people to clean their compounds and dump the rubbish on the streets. It was about cleaning up public space, unblocking the drainage system around Freetown and generally
giving the city a facelift. This was why the NPRC’s social mobilisation program, NASMOS, encouraged young graphic artists to paint pictures of the inexperienced soldiers who had seized power from Momoh’s clueless APC for the usual propaganda purposes and also to instil a sense of patriotism in a nation that by this time had completely lost its nationhood.
Many Sierra Leoneans were fleeing abroad in droves and by any means. Those who remained at home only because they couldn’t leave were so marginalised and disgraced that they could only pray for divine intervention.
I was in the Intermediate or second year in college when the NPRC seized power. Hopes were high. However there were some senior colleagues who, drawing from examples of military rule around Africa, were a little sceptical. I am not here looking at whether the NPRC failed or succeeded. My intention is to help the young reader understand the
mood of the nation at that time in 1992 and what may have brought about the call for national cleaning which does not necessarily apply today.
One evening students were called to a public discussion at the famous Mary Kingsley Auditorium, which, by the way is now, is badly in need of repairs today, to watch a documentary film titled TRADE SLAVES. The film lasted for about one hour after which there was a panel debate around the main issues in the film. I remember vividly that the late Prof. Akintola Wyse was the chairman and Dr. Habib Sesay of the department of political science was one of the panellists. The producers used Sierra Leone’s background in the criminal trans-Atlantic slave trade to argue that a new kind of trade in which Sierra Leoneans willingly sold themselves and their God-given wealth into slavery was now underway.
As you can imagine, the discussion that followed was full patriotic noises and the speakers were like calling on Sierra Leoneans to rise up and re-take their country from bad politicians and greedy multi-national corporations mainly in the mining industry. We left the auditorium in total despair. Yes we were reading for University degrees and then
what?
It was with populist projects like National Cleaning day and the mobilisation of young people around the cause of Sierra Leone including winning regional football competitions that the NPRC rallied the nation behind them until they themselves went off the rails. Twenty years on, we are still using the National Cleaning day, with police
and soldiers enforcing it rigidly on the streets as the main means of fighting filth on our streets. I believe we should have moved on significantly from any such ad-hoc projects designed to score cheap political goals.
There are practical steps we must take now. Let’s immediately ban plastic bags throughout Sierra Leone and let those companies selling water in small sachets and the company that produces mega-cola and other such drinks be made to produce a clear and enforceable environmental impact assessment plan that will indicate how the waste from their
products now clogging our drainage system will be either recycled or properly disposed of. This will not be a world record; many progressive African nations – including Rwanda – have done it with instant positive results.
Let’s face it, a lot of the rubbish on our streets today is dumped there by people in commuter vehicles. It is not uncommon to see people in such vehicles casually throwing orange peels over the window or people disposing of their domestic waste on the streets with careless abandon. This cannot continue. What is really difficult about Poda Poda apprentices using special bins located in their vehicles to collect rubbish from their passengers, which they could deposit at designated collection points at different times of the day?
Let’s also not pretend we haven’t realised how traders are taking over our streets – all the main roads in Freetown are gradually being swamped by petty traders displaying their wares in front of banks and other main government buildings including that disgraceful spare parts centre near Youyi Building. Coupled with the rubbish that is left uncollected for weeks in there the place has become a real eyesore so close to the seat of government business. We understand why so many young men and women are going around the streets of Freetown hawking goods worth nothing in real value. Those people must be taken off the streets with well worked-out social programs that give them hope for the future.
How can we allow the active section of our population to be going around selling rat poison or safety pins all year long? Our politicians have refused to be bold with them for fear of losing votes. I also understand that political survival is important to them but the qualitative development of those who will come after us is a more realistic goal
to try and secure now, than our short-term political interests.
Shanty dwellings are springing up around Freetown without the permission and under the noses of city planners in the housing ministry. I know the war brought a lot of people who would normally live in small rural communities to Freetown but what have our governments done to attract these people back to the great rural life they have now turned their backs on? They have built poorly-ventilated houses packed with people but without something as important as a toilet. We have hundreds of such houses in Freetown where the greedy owners are collecting huge sums of money in rent without providing the necessary facilities and the Freetown City Council is totally unable to move against them and force them to respect their tenants.
The waste management system in Freetown has collapsed under the weight of the people’s expectations and the task at hand mainly as a result of incompetence and corruption. We must have a meeting of all people living in Freetown to put ideas together to fight filth in this city. The new council coming out of the November elections should hold public sessions and open itself to more scrutiny instead of staying shut in that cocoon of a council office along Wallace Johnson Street.
I make no pretences to having provided a comprehensive list of practical steps to fight filth in Freetown but we can start with them. So while the president’s photo opportunity at the weekend is something I would expect every politician to jump at, election or no election, I would also expect the same politicians in their quiet moments to consider some of the practical steps I have put forward. And this is something I have picked up talking to people in Freetown about the menace of filth.
(c) Politico 04/10/12
