In the aftermath of a deadly flood that swept through parts of Freetown on Wednesday, Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr paid a solemn visit to a grieving family in the hillside community of Long Bench, where four relatives including a one-year-old child were lost in the disaster.
The Mayor’s visit was not only an expression of sympathy but a renewed appeal for meaningful policy change. She used the moment to emphasize the urgent need for the devolution of land use planning and building control to local councils functions currently centralized under national authorities.
“Yesterday, I felt loss and I felt frustration,” she said. “The tragedy I witnessed is the direct result of our city’s inability to regulate where and how people build.”
The family’s compound, like many in the area, is located in an unplanned and vulnerable section of Freetown, where years of deforestation, unregulated construction, and lack of infrastructure have left thousands at risk of floods, landslides, and sanitation breakdowns.
Mayor Aki-Sawyerr explained that over 55% of Freetown’s population lives in informal settlements, many without access to roads, drainage, or emergency services. “Everyone builds what they want, where they want,” she said, blaming the current planning vacuum on the Ministry of Lands’ continued control over land use a power that, by law, should rest with local councils.
While the Freetown City Council continues to conduct annual flood mitigation efforts through its #DortiMusGo campaign, the mayor stressed that such clean-ups treat only the symptoms of a much deeper governance failure.
“We need the tools and authority to prevent disasters not just to respond to them,” she urged.
The Mayor also called on Parliament to expedite the passage of the land bill currently under review, which reinforces the Local Government Act’s provision for devolving planning responsibilities to local authorities.
As she sat with the bereaved family, whose youngest member’s body had yet to be recovered, Aki-Sawyerr’s message was clear: the human cost of unregulated urban growth is too high to ignore.
“Lives depend on us getting this right,” she said. “We must do better not just for those we’ve lost, but for those still at risk.”
