By: Mohamed Dauda Kamara
Garbage on the streets at Central, Freetown.
A downpour of rains on the 22 April, 2024, has left the streets of Freetown flooded with foul-smelling garbage at the East-end, Central and West-end of the capital. The stench smell has become thoroughly unpleasant even after the rains.
The rain came in brief, yet the havoc it caused, has induced finger-pointing and blame-shifting, which has, in turn, demanded for an effective approach to avoid any disaster.
Amos Jay Sesay, who was in a taxi on a Monday evening, described the unbearable odor of garbage that was sprawling on the streets as ‘strange and smelly.’
As though this is the first time the city has been flooded with garbage, Amos perceives the city to be too filthy and environmentally hazardous.
“Everybody’s hands are on their noses. It’s strange and renky. The smell is everywhere, from Jui to Portee. It’s like a rotten dead body,” he described.
Workers, partly from the Freetown City Council and the Sierra Leone Road Authority, stood above the garbage, as they cleaned the filthy streets hours after the rain has ceased.
Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyer, who was present during the cleaning of the garbage at Portee on Monday, said in a viral video that the hills and mountains in Freetown are densely populated without any access to proper sanitation.
She urged citizens to take full responsibility of their actions, while underpinning the consequences of improper waste management by residents in the city.
Since 2018, her flagship program has been purely based on “Transform Freetown”. Nonetheless, she said the heap of garbage on the streets does not reflect the “Transform Freetown” agenda.
She owed the view that the disturbing trash on the streets are due to poor waste management, and lack of building permit.
“As a council, we’ve developed the strengthening of the By-laws for sanitation. We’ve engaged the parliamentarians and the Ministry of Local government. Everybody is optimistic,” she relayed.
The By-laws are designed to prohibit the littering of trash or garbage on the streets.
Poor waste management in Freetown is precariously daunting, and the littering of trashes on the streets and gutters, has undoubtedly led to the regular floods in the city during the raining season.
A drainage in Freetown, stuffed with garbage.
A content creator, Vickie Remoe, said it’s “disingenuous” to ask the Mayor for her plans during the wet season.
“Freetownians are filthy. This is their unrecycled plastic waste and garbage,” she said on X.
Freetown is a coastal city in West Africa, squeezed between hilltops and mountains — with one of the highest annual rainfall in the country.
According to the Disaster Risk Financing Strategy and Implementation by the Ministry of Finance, Freetown’s mudslides and floods caused the government $ 16.8 million in damages and $ 14.9 million in losses.
A flooded street in Freetown.
Also, the Emergency Event Database, shows that from 1996 to 2023, more than 320,000 people were affected by natural disaster in the country, while floods affected more than 250,000 people and killed at least 200 people.
There’s a growing fear that the disasters will continue to worsen if actions are not adequately taken to address the environmental issues in the country.
There are already two authorized dumpsites (the Granville Brook and Kingtom) in the city, which have run out of capacity. Environmental activists have argued that there is a growing need to relocate them. Both dumpsites according to health experts are environmentally hazardous, posing serious danger to residents living nearby.
Over the years, the constant cries of residents living in proximity to these dumpsites have not been heard, even though the government has made series of unfulfilled promises to relocate them.
In fact, these dumpsites now serve as informal settlements for scavengers — also acting as a ‘pick-and-sell’ place for them, especially homeless orphans. Homeless boys and girls, who are expected to be in class, can be seen there, walking through the fume of smokes, as they pick some scrape metals to sell.
With all the environmental issues sitting on the neck of Freetown, the recent rain seems to reopen new wounds, foretelling the dangers of this year’s wet season.
