By Omar Bah
The Kanifing Municipal Council has denied reports that the council’s markets are overwhelmed with waste. Videos of wastages purportedly taken at Serekunda and Latrikunda markets circulated on social media last week. The videos attracted reactions from critics of the council.
But speaking to journalists at his office, the KMC market manager, Modou Njie said: “It is not true because the moment I saw the videos online I went to all the markets but I have not seen any indiscriminate waste being dumped.”
Njie said the council under the leadership of Mayor Talib Bensouda has put a lot of priority in waste management especially at the council’s markets.
“We spend hundreds of thousands on waste management just to ensure the council is clean and during the times of feast, we spend over D300, 000 to clean markets. So those who shared those videos did it to sabotage the council but we will not let them succeed.”
He said his office has received several calls from vendors and senior management of the markets since the videos emerged online.
“The markets are clean in three shifts in an effort to ensure they remain clean at all times. It is true that the Latrikunda market was overwhelmed with water immediately after the rain because water was coming all the way from Sukuta. We have started putting together measures to ensure that we clean the drainage,” he said.
He said the council has allocated waste buckets in all the markets ahead of the Tobaski “wanterr”.
“We are also planning to increase our labourers to ensure that the waste collection in our markets is done at the right time,” he said.
Njie denied reports that the council is only collecting waste after every three weeks.
“If you are truthful when you go to our markets today and compare them to before, you will realise that there has been significant improvement in our markets,” he added.
He said the council is doing its utmost best to satisfy its residents.
“We have many plans underway to improve our services but we cannot also go beyond our means. We need the total cooperation of everybody,” he said.
