Cities Alliance’s Clean-up Campaign Gives Paynesville Facelift
Cities Alliance’s Community Cleanup Campaign launched recently in Liberia is making an instant impact, if testimonies from residents of Paynesville and visual pieces of evidence are anything to go by.
Five communities in the municipality, the nation’s largest and most populous, have benefitted from the Alliance’s five-year Country program titled, “Delivering Climate-Resilient Solid Waste Management Services in Greater Monrovia, Liberia through Community Based Enterprises.,” Funding for the project comes from the European Union.
The program promotes climate resilient solid waste practices through community engagement, sanitization, and awareness to community dwellers who were also actively involved in the cleanup process.
The cleanup exercise is part of a range of solid waste management services that the Center for Media Studies and Peacebuilding (CEMESP) is implementing in collaboration with the Paynesville and Monrovia City Corporations (PCC). The five communities that have benefited in the Paynesville City area included; LBS, SKD Sports Complex, Wood Camp, Pipeline, and Cow Field communities. The exercises were conducted on the 20th, 21st, 26th, 27th, and 28th of August 2021 respectively.
A front-loader collecting waste in the LBS Community
“You need to take responsibility for keeping your surrounding clean,” Senjovu Andrew, the Alliance’s M&E Specialist said at the start of the exercise in the LBS Community.
Andrew lauded the residents for the warm reception while urging them to embrace the idea of having a clean environment. Theophilus Gippley, Program Assistant of CEMESP expressed the delight of working with the communities in keeping their respective communities clean.
LBS Community Chairman Mr. Ezekiel Manjoe thanked the Paynesville City Corporation, Cities Alliance and the European Union for supporting the cleanup exercise in their community. “From today’s exercise, we will recruit people from every block to be part of the Sanitation Team. This will help to keep our community clean. A clean community is every community resident’s responsibility,” Mr. Manjoe noted.
In the SKD Sports Complex, Wood Camp, and Pipeline communities, the community leadership and residents embraced the idea of having a clean community and expressed excited for the help from PCC and her partners.
“As we speak to you currently, we are also working with PCC to roll out continued activity after today. We want you to continually work with us to strategize on the house-to-house garbage collection. We need the help of PCC for this to be a success”, Madam Collins noted.
Mr. Gayflor a resident of Pipeline community expressed gratitude on receiving items intended to clean up the. “We see ourselves going to hospital especially during the rainy season because of filth. In most instances, we are the cause of our own problem because we don’t dispose of garbage properly. So, today we are happy that you left your offices and joined us in cleaning our environment,” said Mr. Gayflor.
Several volunteers were recruited recently from the five communities through the leaderships of each of the communities for the clean-up exercises. Each of the selected communities received a consignment of working materials including wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, grass cutters, hand gloves, brooms, reflective vests and nose masks before the start of the clean-up exercises.
The clean-up campaign exercises were preceded by community forums at which time community members received training in proper solid waste management practices and the importance of Community Based Enterprises (CBEs) in the solid waste management process.
Meanwhile, several PCC truckloads of solid waste were lifted from each of the five communities and taken to the landfill in Whein Town. The waste gathered included those collected from homes in the communities and stockpiles of dirt in and around the communities including some backlog of dirt that had overstayed in the communities for a while. On the aggregate, a total of 25 truckloads of wastes amounting to 555.924 Tons of solid waste were taken from the five communities for disposal at the landfill.