LIKE A FOUNTAIN, IT SHOWERS on Mechlin Street waterside, bathing nearly everyone who passes nearby.
AT GURLEY AND BENSON STREETS, it is nearly flooding the entire intersection. Its stench fills the air like an early morning dew, releasing thousands, if not millions, of germs into the air.
FOR THOSE SELLING AND DOING business nearby, they are no longer holding their noses – they have become accustomed to it, even though they pay taxes and in return should have services rendered but it is no longer quid pro quo. Yes, taxes are paid but no services in return as shown in the glitzy billboards across Monrovia.
EVEN SINKOR, CONSIDERED the Beverly Hills of Monrovia, with its many Lebanese leased buildings, are not spared of this health hazard. Nearly everywhere in Central Monrovia is falling prey.
AROUND THE SMYTHE INSTITUTE, students waiting along the roadside to cross the street are often left at the mercy of speeding drivers whose tyres splash water of human feces in their faces.
WELCOME TO MONROVIA, a place where the sewage is filled and clogged but the entity which is responsible, as its name suggests, is completely nonchalant but are yet still on bended knees before the Legislature, asking for an increment in budgetary allotments to change old water pipes.
AS A RESULT OF THIS SPILLAGE of human feces on the street corners of Monrovia, there continues to be a rise of common illnesses such as malaria and typhoid.
THE TURKISH, SEEING THIS THEN, donated a sewage truck to the LWSC to suck Monrovia’s sewage problem but even that isn’t helping.
MONROVIA, BUILT ORIGINALLY FOR 100,000 persons is now bursting at its seams with over a million soul due to the war and rural-urban migration for economic opportunities. With that came the attending circumstance.
MUCH HAS BEEN DONE BY THE LWSC to handle the influx but they are continuously shooting themselves in the leg by still trying to achieve pre-war levels, not taking into consideration that this is 2017 and hence the need to plan for the future.
AND WHILE WE NEED TO CHANGE the pipes bringing water to Monrovians as we don’t want a crisis a la Flint in Michigan, we must also forget our sewage is overfilled and virtually nothing is happening to suck it in, so to speak.
LIBERIANS CANNOT HAVE WATER free of contaminants when the pipes which run alongside the sewer line are always clogged. How disastrous it would be if a water pipe and a sewer line burst in the same area – the attendant would be waterborne illnesses which would take a longer time to find its source.
WE MUST NOT FORGET PRESIDENT Sirleaf is the head of the African Water Health and Sanitation Commission (WASH).
WATER IS LIFE, THEY SAY, but life is also water and it becomes so only when the sewer lines are sucked up to prevent contaminants from entering our water.
THAT CAN ONLY HAPPEN when we free the passageway for the human waste to flow instead of being splashed in the faces of Smyth Institute students or the Fula shoeshine boy on Gurley Street.