One of the biggest challenges the new administration will face is the issue of sanitation, specifically refuse disposal. Across the Nation’s Capital Monrovia, piles of garbages can be seen on roadsides, grave yard fronts and residential properties.
To address this problem, which has serious health implications including diarrhoea from flies sitting and excreting on foods in markets and households to malaria owing to stay waters for breeding mosquitoes, City Governments need to engage with community dwellers and marketers on two fronts. Firstly, consider introducing a waste removal scheme where households are supplied or buy waste bags to keep the waste. Once the waste is bagged, designated refuse dumps or waste collection trucks at a particular time and day should move about to collect the waste. This will require households paying some fees for the service rendered. That should be studied by the City Government to see what price is reasonable and affordable.
Secondly, a sustained awareness campaign on the hazards open disposal of wastes pose to people’s health and how to properly manage the waste through the bagging scheme should be launched. The awareness campaign should aim to change attitudes because herein lies the root of the problem. If households and marketers start buying into the benefits of proper refuse disposal, they will take ownership of the project. Thereby reducing and subsequently getting rid of the disgraceful sights as in Paynesville RedlightMarket as seen in the pictures in this article.
