Eco-talk

By Hassan I. Conteh

A dark sky of cloudbursts on the mountains of Fourah Bay College was handing over some poor young men who were collecting with their bare hands the murky and smelly dirt-heaps dug out from a deep gutter and were carrying it onto a waste collector truck.

At Cottage Hospital in the east of the capital Freetown, few men were using broken rubbers, damaged or loose-held baskets to gather the waterish dirt woven with pieces of materials, rubbers and plastics.

 

An officer of Freetown City Council (FCC) was standing and keeping a close watch on the men, who looked so weak and hungry but appeared very busy, while collecting and depositing the rubbish in the truck.

The Princess Christian Maternity Hospital (PCMH), one of the oldest in sub-Saharan Africa, was established in 1892 by the British missionaries.

But, of late, the hospital which is nicknamed “Cottage Hospital” is fraught with water shortage to supply a vast compound where a children’s treatment division is, the Ola During Children’s Hospital, built around 2010.

Not only water is a problem for the hospital, but repeated power cuts, low blood bank for mothers and babies and the rampant dirt on the hospital’s gutters still represent the many unresolved challenges faced by African’s ancient colonial hospital.

On the government side, it appears as if the city rubbish collector, FCC, does not have enough men to clear away the mountainous dirt daily from our gutters and the swarm of wastes on our several streets in the city.

As journalist, FCC had told me few years back that they didn’t have plenty trucks, wilbarrows, and tricycle waste motors and rubbish bin tanks to enable them do their work effectively.

And workers are only paid some meager sums as wages, I was told then about two years ago.

“Most of the waste collector trucks and vans have damaged beyond repairs; the ones donated to us,” says FCC’s tricycle motor waste collector.

The situation doesn’t look any different as FCC’s men still continue to receive peanuts as wages and they live a life like some prison men.

“We are not on pension schemes; neither we are on health pension scheme. Most of our guys had died of cold or pneumonia over the years,” FCC’s staff, with approximately 20 years’ service, told me at their branch at Black Hall Road, east of Freetown, since 2021.

The filth in the gutter, certainly, had been there without being cleared.

On Monday, FCC decided to dig up the dirt from the gutter beside the Cottage hospital fence. They pay the men just some little sum of money.

“When we come around; we give them each Le 15 to help us clear away the rubbish,” says an officer who refused to be named.

The men, on the other hand, don’t look happy as they grumbled over the little wages offered and with lack of hand-tools provided to do the very tedious work.

They were moving in a group to finish the first truck-trip of the rubbish.

They thought that the rain might affect them that day.

But only a droplet of rain was drizzling from the skies on a gloomy Monday afternoon on July 1, 2024.

The dark clouds have been seen start of May in the rainy season this year.

“Better rains have not come yet this June,” remarked a woman who goes by the name Kadiatu in Freetown.

Most people hope, however; that rains will start coming harder  at end of this year’s rainy season like how it happened for them last year.

“Last year, rains kept coming late onto November and December,” Kadiatu added.

Sierra Leone’s Meteorological Agency (SLMet) had said, “dry spells” meaning late low rains would be experienced in Freetown due to climate change events.

“Sierra Leone can anticipate below-average rainfall for the months of June, July and August, signifying a deficit compared to data from the past 30 years,” says SLMet’s deputy director Gabriel Kpaka, during the launch of the 2024 National Seasonal Outlook on May 3^rd, 2024.

These are signs of climate or weather changes in Sierra Leone.

Mr. Kpaka’s prediction holds true. This year, instead of rains start pouring out hard in June on days’ time only dark clouds could be seen gathering in the sky.

On the scene of the men clearing the rubbish, they could have finished doing the work by 3 pm since the rain only started coming by 6pm on Monday, a day before yesterday.  It heavily came and lasted for hours.

The gutters at Cottage hospital would have become emptied by then to allow the rainwater to freely pass through.

“That is how our gutters supposed to be—be free always without too much cogged up dirt,” matron Mary Koroma, a nurse attached at the Cottage hospital, told Africa 24 newspaper in one of our interviews with her.

And by doing just that adult patients and babies at the Cottage hospital and other patients in other hospitals would not catch other diseases as a result of the unhygienic nature of the hospitals’ filthy surroundings.

But that has never been the case for Freetown as the city’s gutters are always blocked by the rubbish thereby preventing the rainwater from passing out easily.

Can FCC authorities and city residents at homes bolster action to get rid of the rubbish from the streets and the gutters close to our many hospitals!