By Brima Sannoh
The Freetown City Council (FCC), under Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, was caught by the radar of The Calabash for its total lack of and blatant disregard for the dead during the festive season.
FCC, under her watch, failed woefully to ensure that all the graveyards within the Metropolis are brushed of wild grass and properly cleaned against the backdrop that it is a known tradition that on New Year’s day homage is paid to the dead by family members and friends who visit the graveyard to pour libation and ask for blessings, good luck and guidance from their departed relatives.
For most family members that headed to the cemeteries on the of 1st January,2023 they experienced the unexpected jolts in their lives when it was conspicuously manifest that the graveyards have been take over by over grown bushes to an extent that to even make it through to identify graves of their loved ones was like finding a needle in a labyrinth. The cemeteries were very unattractive simply because they have been left unattended for very long periods only for reasons which the Mayor could give.
For a Mayor, who is a Krio, with her place of origin being the Freetown Metropolis, to disrespect the dead in such a defiled manner could speak volumes of how some have turned their backs against traditional beliefs simply because they think they have seen the Western light.
Quite recently, criminals have been embolden to nocturnally dug open the graves or tombs to steal clothes, expensive coffins and jewelry. Such could be attributed to the failure on the part of FCC to have fenced those cemeteries and putting other measures in place to ensure that they are regularly cleaned.
Local Councils, in various parts of the world ,are very significant entities in the State Governance, as they are established to complement the development agenda of the Central Government, whose governance scope goes beyond the Metropolis and cannot at all times deal with certain issues which can best be dealt with by Local Governments.
There are a whole array of things which Councils can deal with, ranging from keeping their cities clean, constructing public toilets, taking care of cemeteries, monitoring markets, giving support to some schools, ensuring that sanity/ decorum prevails etc. Here, recently, in Sierra Leone, because of decentralization, some functions of Ministries, Departments and Agencies were devolved to Local Councils out of the conviction that such will enhance service delivery.
It is no hidden secret that the Councils in the provinces have been doing extremely well in championing development projects and it has been the expectation that the Freetown City Council should have been right on top of the chart because it has greater space to collect taxes mainly from traders, business entities and landlords.
Besides, the Council has external sources of getting revenue, one of which is goodwill gestures from twin cities.
Such cannot be a baseless castigation as over the years various assessments carried out by watchdog institutions revealed that FCC has many lapses and has failed to produce tangible results on the ground that can be considered as positive contributions to the development of the Freetown Metropolis and overall national development.
What over the years many have realized is massive corruption within that institution, with regards how funds generated are expended. There have been times without number when development projects undertaken by the Council were haphazardly done, in sub-standard ways and some not even completed but left to ruin.
Cleaning of garbage within the Metropolis should have been the sole responsibility of FCC but in that direction they proved inefficient simply because those who were implementing it were more concentrated in pilfering funds rather than using those funds judiciously for the intended purpose.
That inefficiency ,which made the capital city of Freetown an eye sore and the most stinking one within the West African sun-region, therefore warranted the Central Government to make an appeal to the World Bank for assistance to rectify the situation and with the latter’s intervention the Freetown Waste Management Company came into being.
Though they started on a sound footing, the mere fact that the company was inextricably linked to FCC automatically deprived it of a free hand to perform as it would have aspired.
Since it was FCC that controlled the finances, most of the garbage collecting trucks became grounded for lack of maintenance work and the untimely payment of workers became the order of the day, which led to resentments and strike actions, hampering the effectiveness of the company resulting to piles or heaps of garbage mountain all over the city with the attendant consequence of proliferation of mosquitoes giving rise to high incidences of malaria cases among city dwellers.
Gradually, the Freetown Waste Management Company collapsed and the business of waste management fell into the hands of a private company, MASADA, which according to findings went into a costly contract with the Government, surpassing what the FCC should have been utilizing to carry out efficient garbage collection.
For now waste collection and management lies in the hand of the FCC but from time to time there have been intermittent strike actions by the cleaners or waste collectors over payment issues. As one is addressed the other rears its ugly head.
What FCC is conspicuously good at doing is to see its Metropolitan Police Officers chasing poor traders on the streets, confiscating their goods, take them to their station only for the traders to pay bribes for the release of those wares.
The Freetown City Council needs to redouble its efforts in order to provide the required services that it is mandated to provide.
