On Saturday 18th June, our teams made up of Councillors, public spaces cleaners, sanitary inspectors, MET Police and community volunteers kicked off our fifth annual flood mitigation exercise at Taylor Street, Wellington.
The exercise, which involves removing garbage and silt from gutters, culverts and other waterways at flash flood points, and engaging communities on the need to have registered waste service providers is aimed at reducing the risk of flooding in areas that are prone to flooding during the rainy seasons.
This year’s will last three alternate weeks with funding from Robert Bosch Foundation through GOAL SL.
To kickstart the exercise, Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr joined our sanitary inspectors and MET Police at Taylor Street to encourage residents and businesses to call 8244 or use findmeinfreetown.com to find waste collectors in the area. She also joined the Environment and Sanitation Officer, Mr Mustapha Kemokai, in the supervision of the cleaning and clearing operations.
Today’s cleaning was successful as all silt cleared out of the gutters were collected by our excavators and skip trucks for dumping at the Kissy Bomeh, to prevent silt making its way back into the gutters and on to the streets.
We continue to advocate for the devolution of land use planning and building permits to all local councils so that construction of homes, especially up in hills, would be better regulated to avoid indiscriminate deforestation and the associated erosion, which fills our gutters and waterways with silt every year.
Credit:FCC
