When the police in collaboration with the Department of Physical Planning and the National Road Authority began the clearing of the roads of illegal structures in the urban areas, many people thought that it will only be for a short time and that too, only in the urban areas. Many observers urged the police to ensure that it is maintained.
However, in the past few days, residents of various parts of the country have also seen their fair share of the demolitions. Take the town of Barra in the North Bank Region for instance. This town used to be so congested that both vehicles and commuters frequently squeezed against each other in order to reach certain destinations.
Added to the fact that the place is small and congested, the ferry terminal is there and when the ferry docks thousands of passengers disembark and start looking for transportation to their various destinations. This makes the place so overcrowded that one will hardly find a place to even walk freely. It takes almost an hour to get out of the garage which shouldn’t take even ten minutes.
Now if one considers the spaces occupied by the hundreds of stalls illegally erected on the sidewalks and other parts of the road, one can only imagine how much tighter the place would become. This place was a mess and when one travels through it, one is left with a sense of frustration.
The demolition of these illegal stalls has gone a long way in improving the situation such that Barra looks far more spacious now than it had been for a long time. Vehicles and passengers can now move freely without much hindrance. That has contributed to saving a lot of time which used to be wasted there.
The main thing that needs to be said here is for the police and their partners to ensure that this does not stop after a little while such that the owners of those stalls will come up again and occupy the space which is now available for the use of everyone.
