Liberia: Garbage overtakes Monrovia, as residents decry sanitation hazards
By: WASH R&E Network – Garbage has taken over the city of Monrovia leaving residents with the fear of imminent health problems if nothing is urgently done to address the situation described as ugly and embarrassing.
Huge pile of garbage can be seen across Monrovia and its environs at street corners, schools and marketplaces, among others.
Madam Florence Karlee selling near the huge garbage
Partial view of the garbage at the Soniwein Market
The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Reporters & Editors Network of Liberia (WASH R&E) as part of its 2013/2014 activities, supported by WaterAid in Liberia and Sierra Leone is focusing media attention on sanitation.
In the wake of the garbage problem in Monrovia, WASH R&E has placed a media focus on the Soniwein Community in central Monrovia with a population of hundreds of residents.
The Soniwein residents upon seeing a team of WASH journalists expressed optimism that with the presence of the media, relevant authorities would intervene and take concrete actions to avert imminent sanitation hazards in Soniwein and other parts of Monrovia.
“We have crying for intervention to clear this huge pile of dirt but nothing has happened; nobody cares what happens, so we are just living here by the mercy of God,” Madam Florence Karlee disappointingly stated on Tuesday, June 4, 2013 in the Soniwein Market in central Monrovia.
She is one of those selling right before a huge pile of garbage situated between the Soniwein Clinic and the market. The garbage produces offensive smells, thousands of mosquitoes, maggots and disease-carrying flies, polluting the entire community and rendering it sanitation-proof.
“This thing has a very great effect bon us here,” the woman believed to be in her mid 50s, selling biter ball and pepper and fanning away flies, said. “Our children and ourselves get sick here every time. We have called on the government to move this garbage site from here and build market hall there for us, but nobody cares,” she lamented.
The garbage site has been there for at least 25 years, Joseph Gibson, father of three, who lives right in front of the dumpsite, explained. The 54-year-old man who has lived there for at least 20 years said he knows more about the place and the effect of the garbage on his family including him.
“This place was bought by former President Samuel Kayon Doe in the 1980s to build playground for children,” he recalled. “Doe bought it from one woman called Mary who is now in the [United] States.”
Unfortunately, he lamented, the place was turned into a dumpsite, despite repeated calls on government to transform the place into a public car park or playground for children of marketers and those in the community.
“I have been here for over 20 years now and garbage has been coming here from all over—Clay Street, Lynch Street, Clay Street and Perry Street,” Gibson continued. “In fact, they bring garbage here in pickups as well from places we don’t know, and we have cried over and over for this garbage site to be removed but no way.”
He said the Monrovia City Corporation and some sanitation companies remove the garbage at times, but it keeps coming to the point that it never finishes.
“This place gets stink; during the rainy season the maggots come out and spread in the community. They make our children get sick—Cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, malaria, typhoid and other sicknesses,” he lamented.
Thousands of flies are seen buzzing around foodstuff in the area. On the far end, children from the community and those of marketers are allowed to defecate in the smelling garbage, increasing the offensive smells of the community. Huge rats and roaches crawl out of the dump plied and move towards the market and into the community.
“They (flies) come and sit on our market, the get in our food, too. We know it’s not good; it’s not safe for us but what to do. No other place and the people not listening to us,” Madam Karlee asserted.
Few steps away from Karlee live Evelyn, her husband and three children. “This place is too bad for us. We see all kinds of things in the garbage: they bring dead bodies, young babies in the dirt.”
Her door open ajar while she ties coal in plastic bags for sale, Evelyn explains that “the dirt and the pu-pu (feces) scent make this place stink. We and the flies, mosquitoes, roaches and rats live, sleep and eat together. We are one family. They jump into our rooms and dishes, in our beds.”
The aftermath, she said, is sickness—all kinds of sicknesses, fresh cold, running stomach, malaria, among others, she recounted.
The situation at Soniwein is not new. Former Acting Monrovia City Mayor Mary Broh and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf once led a cleaning up campaign in the community to give the place a face lift, during which the President expressed anger over the nastiness of the area.
She reportedly stated that government would transform the place from dumpsite to play ground, pulling joy from the people, but that promise is far from realizing.
Officials of the Soniwein Clinic have themselves complained of pollution and of flies overwhelming the health center that caters to thousands of patients monthly. “This is a complete health center in health hazard,” Moinjama Hawa Kamara told this writer once. “This kind of situation, no doubt, seriously affects newborn babies and increases the illness of sick people; something needs to be done about this garbage site.”
Liberia is one of those African countries losing millions of dollars to poor sanitation and hygiene.
A World Bank 2011 survey revealed that 18 African countries (Liberia included) are losing US$5.5 billion annually due to lack of water and sanitation. The report also stated that between 1% and 2.5% of GDP is also lost. Open defecation alone accounts for almost US$2 billion annual losses in the 18 African countries studied.
The same World Bank study reported that Liberia alone loses US$17.5 million each year due to poor sanitation and this amount is equivalent of US$4.9 per person in Liberia or 2.0 per year or 2.0% of GDP.
It stated that 1.2 million Liberians use unsanitary or shared latrines; 1.7 million have no latrine at all and defecate in the open (like the Soniwein market garbage site). Media focus on sanitation continues.
