By Olando Testimony Zeongar
MONROVIA – Liberia’s oldest city and the country’s capital, Monrovia, is covered in filth with the stench in various categories including human feces and garbage polluting particularly the city center.
On a daily basis, damaged sewage lines are gushing out human wastes into crowded market centers and major streets such as Capitol By Pass, as well as Mechlin and Water Streets, while government’s institution tasked with the statutory responsibility to provide sanitary care to the City of Monrovia, the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC), folds it arms and watch, to the discomfort of several Liberians, some of whom are laying blame squarely at the feet of City Mayor Jefferson Tamba Koijee, for such hazardous situation.
At Liberia’s oldest trading center, the Water-Side Market and at another market named in honor of the wife of slain former President Samuel Doe, the Nancy B. Doe Jorkpehn Town General Market, located on 4th Street, in Sinkor, human waste oozes out of broken sewage lines, unpleasantly sending malodor out to shoppers, pedestrians, commuters and motorists, alike.
A Liberian journalist, Edward Blamo, recently took to Facebook, calling authorities’ attention to a broken sewage line between Capitol By-Pass and Sinkor, which according to him, is transmitting a huge quantity of feces-contaminated water running in the public street.
“Something has to be done,” wrote Blamo, who described the odor from the feces-contaminated water as being disgusting.
“The disgusting part is that, the pupu [feces] scent doesn’t just go through your nose. It enters your brain and stays there for some time,” he further wrote.
While several Liberians are calling on the Liberia Water and Sewage Corporation (LWSC) to mend its broken sewage lines and put an end to the pollution of the city, Mr. Samuel G. Dweh, former President of the Liberian Association of Writers (LAW), attributes the filth overtaking the capital to what he called the incompetence of Monrovia City Mayor Koijee.
Dweh, who described the Mayor of Monrovia as “an incompetent young man”, accused the flamboyant Mayor Koijee, of not undertaking tours of the city to inspect what he termed “garbage situation.”
Unlike Koijee’s predecessor Madam Mary T, Broh, who is now Director General of the General Services Agency (GSA), Dweh scolded flamboyant Koijee for failing to follow Broh’s foot steps in undertaking garbage inspection tours.
Dweh blamed President George Weah for Koijee’s dismal performance, as far as the City of Monrovia being unkempt is concerned, referring to the President as the City Mayor’s “god-father”, who for over five years now, has not seen reason to sack Koijee for what he (Dweh) called “governmental incompetence” on the part of the Mayor of the City of Monrovia.
He accused the Weah administration of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars last year, to make Monrovia ‘clean and green’ by regularly cleaning the City, but noted that the topography of the capital city is covered with “human beings’ metabolic wastes pumping from burst septic tanks along sidewalks or in the middle of major streets, including jam-packed general market areas.”
Dweh is not alone in blaming Koijee for the filth Monrovia is sinking in, as several market women trading downtown at the Water-Side General Market, who asked to remain anonymous for this report, lashed out at the fancy Mayor Koijee, among others slamming him for always being neat and well-dressed while according to them, the city under his jurisdiction is filthy and unattended to.
As at the time of this publication, a request for response sent by Smart News Liberia to the MCC Public Relations Department, had not been replied.
