Africa 24 news

By Hassan I. Conteh

On a Wednesday hot-burning sun in the afternoon, a stroll around the perimeter fence at Bumeh waste site, is pretty suffocating.

One has to envelope or cover up one’s face to suppress the huge black smoke billowing in the sky in plumes. It’s seriously polluting the fresh air in the atmosphere.

This area has long become a quick-pass place by people to avoid the thick smoke affecting them. Usually, waste site workers would pull up the dead and decayed solid and plastic materials to be burnt up.

Whenever this activity happens along the Kolbot, Ackram and Ferry Junction axis, where the bumeh site is, in the east of Freetown, passers-by and passengers on vehicles don’t have a choice but will bury their heads down in torment due to the smoke that pervades almost everywhere.

State municipal council authorities have vowed to move away the old Bumeh waste site to faraway place from the capital. But that plan seems to have become a hoax. World Bank in Sierra Leone has equally promised to fund the government to remove the city’s major dumpsite elsewhere – at a landfill countryside.

Smoke, in particular, is dangerous to our health. It can cause irritation to the eyes, noses, throats and lungs, as well as increased the risk of respiratory leading up to breaking difficulties.

“We are fed up with city council about their plan to remove the bumeh from Freetown to the province. It is affecting our business here mostly,” says a cookery seller at Ackram community.

A global research in 2021 found that pollutants from wildfire smoke caused 10% increase in hospital admissions. Other research shows that carbon smoke and carbon monoxide (the smoke from cars’ engines, for example) can cause cardiovascular disease on human.

Though Sierra Leone hasn’t available research on the number of admission cases of victims caused by toxic smoke effects, the dangers that the uncontrolled rising black smoke around Bumeh pose on people still represent deep challenges year in, year out.