Operation Clean Freetown

Ebola don go, dorti sef fo go

Rubbish and waste in Freetown’s streets, waterways and gutters is polluting the city’s streets and contaminating its water, leading to the spread of diseases such as malaria, typhoid and diarrhoea.

Freetown City Council and WARDC are working with the President’s Delivery Team, the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and the Freetown WASH consortium on Operation Clean Freetown.  

This will be an intensive clean of Freetown and its surrounding area, followed with a new rubbish and waste collection plan which will help keep the city and its suburbs clean. The Clean Freetown campaign is a three phase process:  

1.    Phase one will improve the waste management infrastructure.  This will include flattening and compacting the dumpsites at Kingtom and Granville to make more space and the temporary increase of transit/waste collection points in Western Area Urban and Western Area Rural to 77 (at least one in each of the participating wards).  During this phase youth groups will be equipped and trained as waste collection micro-enterprises.

2.    In Phase two it will be compulsory for all households to subscribe for regular paid waste collection from the youth groups operating in their wards or from an alternative waste management provider. The youth groups will transport collected waste to the transit points within their wards and the transit points will be emptied by the transit point service company (MASADA for Western Area Urban and Community Clean Association for Western Area Rural).  All households will also be required to participate in an intensive cleaning process, which will target an average of five wards every two days over a 30-day period. Residents will be encouraged to clean their neighborhoods together, although they will not have to remain at home.

3.  

The final phase of Operation Clean Freetown will be the sustainability phase.  It will include awareness raising and the enforcement of by-laws by MOHS and FCC Public Health Aides and Inspectors.  The youth group waste collection micro-enterprises will continue to receive business development support to ensure that they are economically sustainable.  It is during this final phase that we will engage the manufacturers and distributors of plastic products such as bags, sachets and bottles, to hear their solutions to the problem of plastic waste.