By Yankuba Jallow
Many junctions in the main urban centers with the Kanifing Municipality, have heaps of rubbish dumped at main street junctions within Serre Kunda and other settlements.
These heaps of waste have been left since the nationwide cleansing exercise commonly called ‘set setal’ on Saturday, July 29 2017.
People came out in large numbers to clean their environments but the heaps of garbage were not collected due to inadequate vehicles to transport the waste to the Bakoteh/Manjai dumpsite.
Four days after the ‘set setal’, the urban centres are still filthy with uncollected waste, and this poses a health threat to the population. Government through the Ministry of the environment and the KMC, has declined to explain the failure to execute the timely collection of disposed waste, generated from these ‘Set Settals’.
Heaps of rubbish can be seen in streets in the towns like Serrekunda, Banjul and other areas. At the Serrekunda main market, worms (maggots) and flies are the pests that welcome you at stalls and on the ground especially the various places where they sell meat, fish, vegetables etc.
Residential places and business centres these days remain filthy because of the large heaps of garbage that remain uncollected for days. The KMC has been very ineffective for the past months when it comes to garbage collection. The municipal council has faced a crisis of dumping waste at the Manjai / Bakoteh during the past few months, because the communities of Manjai and Bakoteh protested against the dumping of waste at the site. Now that this problem has been resolved, the KMC should strategies the timely collection of waste after such ‘Set Settals’ to avoid the outbreak of disease.
These days, the terrible odour that blows in the air affects most areas where uncollected garbage heaps remain especially at street junctions on the Mamadi Maniyang highway. This can be seriously life threatening especially to those living in close proximity to these heaps of garbage.
