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Thinking Aloud: City Father and City Traders â€“ Strange bedfellows

Author: SEM Contributor

One disgusting feature about our capital, Freetown is over population. Too many living things in the capital! These can be categorized as humans (consisting of commuters, pedestrians, street kids, hawkers, street traders, beggars, mad people, etc). Some demographers say the population of street beggars and mad people (often referred to as the medically ill) all combined would nearly double that of the sane.

There is also the category of those referred to as domestic or stray animals that form the bulk of the Freetown population. These are dogs, cats, rats, roaches, flies, mosquitoes, etc. Indeed, there is the uncanny feeling among city dwellers that the increasing presence of these creatures in a city that boast of re-branding its image would one day chase the human population out this ancient city. Mark my word!

Overcrowding is an offshoot of over population. Overcrowding is evident in homes where three or more family members share a single bed or floor space to spend a night or in the case of an office where two to three workers share one chair or table in the name of employment or where one hundred or two hundred students share one tiny classroom space in the name of acquiring education.. This is true of many government institutions in Freetown.

Congestion is another social malaise in our city which has over the years expanded disproportionately in size and length without the corresponding availability of the required material or physical resources to meet the pressing needs of the population. Today there are more vehicles and â€˜okadasâ€™ in the city but with fewer roads that are often poorly maintained.

Coming to my point, even with all the inconveniences, social and economic, residents of the capital are forced to cope with in the name of living in a capital city, none can be acute as the one represented by street trading.

Long before President Ernest Bai Koroma became President of this Republic, street trading has ever remained a menace, a source of frustration for many pedestrians and motorists alike. It is said that street trading contributes to traffic congestion in the most disturbing manner including the many accidents related cases especially in the busy business centre of the city.

Interestingly, it is the irritating attitude and behavoiur of street traders that saw many big businesses relocating in the periphery of the city, that is, either Lumley in the west or Calaba Town in the east. And the traders, mostly of northern origin, have refused to vacate the streets, despite the persistent harassment of city council officials. Well, the traders have a point.

This country, we were once told, was to be run as a business entity the moment Ernest Bai Koroma took over the mantle of leadership, such that even the few available streets suddenly became shops or showrooms to accommodate all manner of business activities. Today, the outcome of this widespread unregulated street trading is there for all to see: the traffic jams and the accompanying petty crimes, but above it all the filth. Freetown, they say, has become the filthiest city in the world, with heaps of garbage transforming themselves into despicable eye sores. Beyond that the Freetown continues to the base for political gimmicks.

Sadly, the President of the Republic has conspicuously remained silent over the embarrassing development. Rather, it is the City Father, self-styled political demagogue of the city that now has sleepless nights as he clears the mess left behind by the defiant traders.

As a clever way of blackmailing the government, the traders would always complain the non-availability of markets as their reason for selling on the streets of Freetown. Well, city council, by way of responding to the pressure, has constructed markets in the municipality, some nearing completion but the traders have refused to enter even the ones completed. Their grievances: the market stalls are either too expensive to pay for or too small to accommodate their wares.

Now city council officials who think they have been hit below their belts by the recalcitrant traders have intensify their harassment. Each day a group of cash strap city council police officials would swoop on traders along some â€˜forbiddenâ€™ streets and whisk their wares away. At the City Council office at Wallace Johnson Street, a trader would â€˜redeemâ€™ his or her goods by paying a special fee. It is tears, tears all the time, a price they have to pay for transforming this city into a market place, an elder once remarked.

Meanwhile, the City Father sits quietly in his â€™ovalâ€™ office, waiting for the loot from the street trading while the angry traders curse under their breadth for being betrayed by the â€˜systemâ€™.

â€œDen wan ya, god go pay dem for wi,â€ one trader was heard crying bitterly as she paid the few thousand leones on her to council officials in order to redeem her wares which had been violently seized by the city police.

It is a war between the traders and council, whoever wins it, will form part of the history of this ancient as it celebrates its fiftieth birthday a year or so from now. But the uneasiness continues to haunt the City Father in no small way.

by Abdul Karim, Freetown

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