By Hassan I. Conteh

Local councils in Western -Rural districts are doing series of weekly cleaning up activities amidst scare equipment and resources.

Waste disposal trucks are not many; wheelbarrows are few; council men are in peanuts numbers.

At an area along Ackram community which is on Jenner Wright Road in Freetown, a man holds a rake at a notorious flood place in the east of the capital.

He is a Freetown City Council man.

On the picture above Gabriel John Hallowel, Head of Climate and Disaster Management Unit at Freetown City Council, bows down on his knees to pull up the rubbish.

The culvert area is where Mr. Hallowel was doing some cleaning by removing the huge dirt being drifted here by rainwater.

Whenever rain bursts usually like the ones in August occur, water flows Ackram and other areas in the city and the dirt often blocks out these water, preventing it to easily pass through the narrow gutters.

This causes water to overflow the main streets in Freetown and in Western Area Rural towns like Waterloo, Tombo, Kissy Liberia Refugee Camp.

As the tarred roads overflowed with water at Ackram, other places nearby become at risk too in Freetown.

One such a place that is normally affected by this is Saint Theresa Primary School at Ackram in Freetown, and whose block perimeter fence often sees floods around.

Children in this school are sometimes being trapped into the school compound.

A good many of the school-going children would have to wait on their parents or guardians before they could be picked up from school.

Like Saint Theresa, this happens to other pupils in other schools in Freetown.

One such a school that suffers this similar problem of flood is Municipal Primary School on Kennedy Street,Fourah Bay community, East End of Freetown.

It is built on a lowland on the foot of Fourah Bay College hills.

And because the school is built on  the lowland, floods are common in the school compound as water pours out from Mount aureole communities.

Years back, sadly, the primary school at Kennedy caught a huge fire and was reduced down to rubble.

Luckily then, mayor Aki Sawyer came in and helped to put up another building for the kids with clay-bricks beautifully used to put up the new structure.

But when heavy downpour occurs Municipal school compound is overflowing with rainwater, causing children to ‘tick-toe’ onto the waters while ready to go home.

Not only many schools in Freetown are affected by rains particularly in August in the mid of the rainy season in Sierra Leone, but also households are seriously affected too.

The capital Freetown has suffered serious floods such as recent as a  major one in 2017 and on September 15, 2015.

In August 14, 2017 alone, about 1, 141 people were killed by a mudslide after some heavy rains on Regent hills in Freetown which falls on Western Area Rural district.

Many hundreds have been succumbed to deaths by floods between July and September over the years.

While about hundreds more have been made homeless.

The September 15 food victims were evacuated to Mile Six, on the countryside, which is about 33 km off the capital city.

That was in the year 2017.

But most of those September victims had cause to flee off Mile Six due to reportedly lack of continuous help by government and by some humanitarians.

Usually, victims of floods and similar disasters like mudslides and fire outbreaks  in Sierra Leone are not receiving the proper attention and care they needed by government and aid partners.

The usual assistance for victims of natural and man-made disasters is often short-lived-the help on disaster affected persons usually lacks continuity.

Seeing that  flood occurrences in Freetown over the years have been causing the loss of  many lives and uncountable destruction of valuable properties– council disaster boss says ”flood mitigation”-is a step in the right direction.

”We’ve decided to work with IOM to undertake street cleaning activities in order to combat the repeated floods in most flood-prone areas like here,” says Mr.  Hallowel.

International Organization for Migration (IOM) has a sound initiative to help prevent the too-many year-round flood disasters happening in Freetown.

The initiative is known as Community Disaster Risk Reduction, which is in line with FCC’s and WARDC’s flood and waste mitigation plan.

IOM’s disaster initiative is implemented to complement the work of FCC’s work and the Government of Sierra Leone on preventing floods caused by heavy rains.

Other local NGOs are also collaborating with local councils and the central government of Sierra Leone.

They have initiated what they refer to as ”Pilot Project on Flood Mitigation and Waste Management (PFMWA)”.

The PFMWA is meant  to do an awareness raising and information campaign on the issue among people who live in Western Area Rural District.

To strengthen their messages among community people, Women’s Advocacy and Agricultural Development Organization (WAADO) are partnering with Western Area Rural District Council (WARDC), and the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) on undertaking PFMWA’s project.

The partners are doing community public awareness raising on the ”dangers of floods” and the threats of wastes to human beings to the environment to animals and to other living things.

Whereas, IOM returnees and FCC workers have been teaming up on weekends doing some cleaning exercises in the capital.

”We believe it helps them (the returnees) a lot; it will make their minds to be stable and be hopeful. These are our returnees from Algeria, Morocco, Mali, Libya,” an IOM boss said.

One IOM returnee expains just how it feels like for him to be able to serve his country.

”This is our country, Sierra Leone. We are always happy to give back to it. And we think this activity is really a physical exercise for us which also helps us greatly to be healthy.  We’ve been to other communities this morning before we come to Ackram which is our last point of contact today” he said.