Over low sales and health hazards: Makeni’s main-market Traders halt daily dues payment “until forsaken waste is cleared”

​​By: Alusine Rehme Wilson 

Piles of neglected wastes at the Makeni main market have not only drove away buyers from coming to the market on daily basis for nearly eight weeks now, cutoff the free flow of movements along Campbell Street of both people, motorbikes, cars among others, it has now exposed traders and residents of the area to several health hazards.  

Apart from them "being heartbroken, traders say they are at the moment very vexed and will not pay routine market dues any longer until cleanliness is restored in their business center." 

Yesterday, I visited the said market with my face mask on to resist the stinking smell the waste is producing, interviewed some of the traders, mostly women about the situation and why they’ve resolved to halt the daily payment of market dues to the Makeni City Council.

They replied, saying: "we’ve resolved to halt the daily payment of market dues to the Makeni City Council effective Monday, July 11, 2022 for failing to collect piles of abandoned waste at the market, leaving them exposed to coughing, inhaling awful air, destroying some of their commodities as well as limiting their daily sales.  

“Buyers don’t come to buy our commodities anymore for over two month now because of the pile of wastages that has been abandoned at our market for over two months now, our commodities like palm oil, pepper and fish are sold daily uncovered and the presence of the waste near where we are trading is exposing out business to germs and unseen bacteria which is not healthy to us as traders, our customers and their families, said Madam Aminata Koroma, the fishmongers chairlady.

Mrs. Mariatu Jalloh who sells “Beans and Ogre” said: “This is the worst moment we’re experiencing at the Makeni main market since I started selling here in 2010. It’s hard to now distinguish whether this is the city’s largest market or the newly established dump site of the Makeni City Council since piles of wastes have been neglected by authorities concerned.

"Some of us and our families members are beginning to starve because of low sales for over six weeks since our customers started complaining about health hazards the current state of the market has cause them by extension their family members every time they come to buy our unhygienic products. 

"This is all why we’ve also agreed as traders to stop paying daily market taxes to revenue collectors from the city council until all of this waste is cleared from our business place," she added.

49-year-old Madam Fatmata Kamara, a widow who has been selling assorted cooking ingredients at the Makeni market for over a decade now told Awoko that: “as traders we are so vexed over the health hazards and decreased in our daily sales we’re experiencing due to current situation of our market has caused but on behalf of other traders appeals to authorities concerned to quickly step-up and come to their rescue otherwise they will be forced to close their business due to the crumpled sales and ill health the forsaken waste presence at the market is causing them.

“We’re ordinary traders who don’t have the power to fight anyone including some unpatriotic persons that have turned the market as a dumping site of their wastes from their homes but we are certain that our latest decision not to pay daily market dues anymore to the Makeni City Council revenue collectors will urge the Mayor and other authorities concerned to clean up our once ever tidy market again,” dozens of other market women interviewed stated.

Also interviewed at the Makeni main Market was Councilor Ibrahim Fuhad Sheriff of the Makeni City Council who was spotted with a shovel loading some of the wastes on one of the council’s trucks. 

I asked him what had led to the presence of the huge trunk of wastes at the municipality’s main market and what they as authorities of the city’s council are planning to do regarding clearing up the waste from the area.

He started off with a defense that the wastes have not been at the market for over two months as traders alleged, says the pile of waste seen at the market is not only a composition of the wastes generated by traders at the market but one that also involves wastes dumped by nearby residents of the area who now finds pleasures to turning the area as their dumping site.

“We’re constrained as a council particularly with the shortage of fuel in the city as well as the new normal by some citizens and other residents who are persistently dumping waste from their homes at the market, '' he said.

He continues begging persons residing near the market to help the city council to monitor and reports perpetrators that are involved in the daily dumping of their wastes from their houses especially during the night, says “any perpetuator caught in the act or being reported will be thoroughly dealt with according to the state laws and by laws of the council.”

And promised that the mayor of the city Sunkarie Kabba Kamara and other staff of the Makeni City Council are teaming up with the Sierra Leone Road Authority-(SLRA) to collect all  the wastes from the market gradually as it will only takes a process to address such a herculean task, he further said. 

Nevertheless, the signs are now clearly written on the walls of history that previous ratings of Makeni being the cleanest in Sierra Leone will all go in the drains with the reoccurring neglect of duty bearers not being able to adequately deal with the appealing burdens inadequate waste management is resting on the residents of the municipality.

And let one be curious to know how the multimillion dollar Wealth Hunger Hilfe-(WHH) funding, home tax revenue generated as well as what is being done with the million of Leones that is being allocated on quarterly and yearly basis to waste management in the city as shown in the yearly and audited budgets of the Makeni City Council.