Council on massive city clean-up blitz

The Juba City Council authority has embarked on a massive clean-up campaign in an effort to bring about sanitation and hygiene within the city.

The new Mayor of Juba City Council, Kalisto Lado Faustino, said his aim is to transform the look of the City which has been without a clear set structure since independence.

“Cleaning the city is a collective responsibility for both the government and citizens. They are partners in ensuring the hygiene of the City. As we will be collecting the garbage, let people not throw their refuse in the middle of the road,” Lado urged.

The Mayor said the cleaning campaign to keep Juba clean will start on a daily basis.

“The collection is going on well and we are planning to carry it in every residential area and in the main streets at least every day,” he said.

Lado revealed that the campaign to improve sanitation within the City would be a continuous process saying that every household in different residential areas are given polythene bags to keep their garbage.

The polythene bags of garbage are then collected by the city council workers daily. He said the council is enforcing the campaign so that the program becomes part of the public routine to ensure the city is clean.

“Cleaning the city does not stop, because it is a daily activity. What we want to achieve is that cleanness should be exercised such that it become part of our public culture. This campaign is endless, you cannot stop garbage and cleaning,” he said during clean-up campaign.

The Leader said the administration will not leave those individuals who keep littering the environment go unpunished adding without punishing the lawbreaker’s lawlessness would bound to continue.  

He confessed that majority in the city defy the order for clean-up alluding that most of the citizens consider littering the city a culture.

“The difficulty we face is that many people do not look into this kind of throwing waste as a bad practice. They see it as something normal to them, some of the responsible people who are driving vehicles throw also these plastics bottles along the road. Some even bring garbage from their houses and throw it along the main road,” Lado said.   

Lado revealed that lack of enough resources is the major factor impeding the progress of collecting refuse timely. The administrator called on the stakeholders to collectively join hands as a step to ensure healthy sanitation is achieved in the city.

The initiative, dubbed “Keep Juba Clean”, was started by United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in 2009. The campaigns had help to raise awareness of sound waste management practices in Juba, according to the UN agency.

Later it was handed over to Juba City Council in 2015 when it was officially launched. The initiative was geared to prepare the country for its independence commemoration in 2011.

Despite the move, however, the town still faces rampant waste dumping with poor disposal particularly the in main markets such as Custom, Konyokonyok, Gudele among others.   

He stated the institution has set plans to recycle every garbage collected emphasizing the plan will save the environment.

By Joseph Loful