Paynesville – If faith is the substance of things not seen—perhaps even for a city—the Mayor of Paynesville, E. Pam Belcher-Taylor, seems to have a high dosage of it as she steers it as one of the 100 resilient cities in the world.
Paynesville is reputed to be the largest municipality in the country. According to the 2008 national census, the city boasts of over 400,000 inhabitants. Nestled near the east of Monrovia, it encompasses parts of Somalia Drive—beginning at Double Bridge—straight up to R2 on the Robertsfield Highway. It further extends beyond the Coca-Cola factory.
A year later following her appointment as Mayor of arguably the country’s biggest and largest urban metropolitan, Madam Taylor says the challenges of running the city have been exciting and it is one which she is not backing down or cowering from.
“It has been a learning experience—a challenging and exciting one,” she says with a streak of smile. “What we didn’t meet here, we have been able to make up for it.”
Months following her takeover of the city, Mayor Taylor says she had many a sleepless night as she was dwarfed by calls that her city was wallowing in heaps of garbage which posed a major health hazard to the inhabitants.
She mentioned that the major contributing factor to this was the Liberia Marketing Association’s (LMA) apparent reluctance to pay the city for cleaning the markets. The LMA collects garbage fees from its (LMA’s) fourteen markets across Paynesville but, according to Madam Taylor, it does not remit the money to the PCC as they (PCC) are the ones who actually clean the market. It is a situation which she says her city is running thin on patience.
“I was told by LMA members that they paid for garbage collection. It appeared it wasn’t the case. I took on the task because I couldn’t allow moms and daughters to wallow in filth. To date, we have successfully cleaned all the major markets but LMA needs to step up to the plate if we will be successful in cleaning all 14 markets in Paynesville,” she asserted. Madam Taylor highlighted that the LMA collects between L$20-$150 per market table a day.
The LMA operations superintendent, Madame Gormah Flomo, in the presence of this writer, acknowledged the uncooperativeness of the LMA, saying money collected from marketers to clean the garbage has not been remitted to the PCC.
To take on this onerous task which appeared to be her political “coup de grace,” she enlisted the help of a prominent Liberian businessman, Mr. S.B. Cooper, who was handy with the provision of a yellow Caterpillar machine, a frontend loader plus fuel which came at no cost to the city. Mr. Cooper does not reside within the municipality.
Weeks following her confirmation, Madame Taylor said Ms. Danielette Nimely, George Howe, Jimmy Strother as individuals who came to the aid of the city to jumpstart her administration on a pro-bono basis. They were later joined by Mr. Kwaku Addy who loaned the city four tricycles. The tricycles have recently been returned, according to the mayor. Hyssa and Kour Enterprise and Desire Construction were also a part.
The Mayor was exclusively full of praises for Hon. Thomas Fallah, Montserrado County District #5 representative in the Legislature. She added that Rep. Fallah has been vociferous in advocating and ensuring that Paynesville is captured and streamlined in the country’s development agenda. “Rep. Fallah stood by the city and made sure we got our appropriation from the Weah for Clean City Campaign.”
In furtherance, she mentioned that all garbage across the city has been removed. “We had what I’d like to call hot spot areas for garbage—those were areas where it was difficult to get rid of garbage,” she added. Mayor Taylor said that there were 19 garbage hot spot areas across the city and it has all been effectively removed.
“We have erected deterrent booths in these hot spot areas. NASSCORP sponsored the first booth. We later called them transformation booths because those areas where garbage was dropped have been transformed; now they are called tyrant booths because we believe those people who are dumping garbage are tyrants and we want to ensure they are apprehended.”
While it seems that the Mayor of Paynesville appears to have her city in an apparent order, there were a lot of kinks which she says she had to wade through. “We met two old pickups, two Turkish compactor trucks which weren’t working.”
Mayor Taylor added that the World Bank has also been greatly involved in working with the PCC. “PCC got its first yellow machine from the World Bank. I requested tricycles from them and they delivered as well,” she said.
The Mayor was also fond of praises for Water Aid which promised to fund a flood study of Paynesville, and flew in waste management experts from Sweden. She mentioned Cities Alliance as a staunch supporter as well as Jessica Allen of Conservation International.
CBEs to the rescue in communities
The removal of garbage from the roadside requires an effective door to door community garbage collection. It is a task which the city has delegated to Community Based Enterprises (CBEs). For a tidy annual sum of US$355, the city gives out accreditation to CBEs to go into the community.
Arthur Campbell, Director of General Services at the PCC, says each CBE is assigned to a community to pick up garbage. The CBE charges each household or business house an amount which is payable weekly or monthly, based on an arrangement.
He added that in order to make the arrangements between the CBEs and the communities workable, an inspector is assigned to each community to ensure compliance by both parties. “If a CBE becomes delinquent, an inspector is called and the CBE is reported. If the community, on the other hand, is not complying by ensuring the CBE gets its payment, the inspector is called by the CBE as well—it’s a two-way street.”
Campbell leads his team to clean waste from markets across the city thrice a week. On a normal cleaning day, the team begins at 8 pm at the LBS market, and then onto AB Tolbert Road, and later at Duport Road before heading onto other areas as well.
Wastes collected from the various dumping points are emptied at the Whein Town landfill which is managed by the Monrovia City Corporation. Some days when there are fire outbreaks at the landfill due to incendiary materials in some waste, the Whein Town landfill shuts down for a week or two. Often times, it becomes difficult for Campbell and his team but Madam Taylor says the city is constructing a transit waste site in the Omega Community, and at the moment needs US$200,000 to complete it.
Overall, he says, the relationship between residents of the city and the PCC has been very cordial. “We have started an initiative to educate residents of Paynesville on how to manage their garbage.”
Paynesville is one of the resilient cities in the world
The challenges of running the City of Paynesville seem to be many. However, there always seem to be a silver lining. In 2017, the city was selected by the Rockefeller Foundation to join its 100 resilient cities network.
This allows Paynesville to tap into the network of 99 cities across the world. There are five cities in Africa who are part of this initiative. As part of the requirement, each city must have a chief resilient officer. The CRO is the interlocutor between the city and the resilient cities network. The would-be CRO must undergo a rigorous interview with the Rockefeller Foundation with no interference from the PCC. The CRO is paid by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Mrs. Bindu Brewer is the Chief Resilience Officer of Paynesville. The first female CRO in Africa, Mrs. Brewer was selected by the Rockefeller Foundation following a cumbersome interview done with a slew of candidates who applied for the job. “The [Rockefeller] Foundation felt I was the most qualified candidate who applied for the job,” she says.
Brewer’s job is to work alongside a strategy partner (who is also paid by the Rockefeller Foundation) to gather and analyze data. She thinks of them as shocks and stresses of Paynesville.
The significance of these shocks and stresses, Brewer said, are analyzed and within a period of six months, a preliminary assessment is presented to the PCC and the resilient cities network. Within a year, following the tabulation and the tabling of the data, the final report will be launched. “It is the first time a city in Liberia is having an urban development planning done and Paynesville is the pilot,” she added.
Though Brewer and her strategy partner have gone halfway into the task, logistics remains an issue. For example, she pales in comparison to the CRO of Lagos, Nigeria who has an entire team, ranging from comms unit, report writing group etc.
Despite these surmountable odds, Brewer remains upbeat about getting the job done. She has met with all community leaders of Paynesville and some of the major shocks of Paynesville put forth by these leaders have been the issue of waste management, flooding, and unemployment.
While these issues are perched as amongst the top three of Brewer’s findings, Madam Taylor sees them as issues which can be tackled. “For example, we can break Paynesville into three zones and supply each zone with 50 to 75 tricycles to collect garbage within the community. To curb the issue of flooding, we have started an initiative with Evergreen to kick plastic out of Paynesville. They have started to pick plastic off the streets. We will be going after mineral water companies whose plastic we find.” And though unemployment is an issue for the current government and the one before it, Taylor is optimistic it will be tackled via the government’s Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development (PAPD).
‘Not only the biggest janitor of Paynesville’
Serving as the “biggest janitor” of Paynesville is not the only job Pam Taylor has. For her city to thrive, she must strategize and raise revenues. Doing this requires some out of the box thinking. “Revenue comes from the ballroom—we intend to get it on par indicative of its name. We collect municipal taxes—I want to capture all businesses operating within the municipality,” she mentioned. Taylor added that she is very tough on noise pollutions in the communities and violators are fined. “People want to rest; the children have to go to school.”
The Mayor recently secured a waste management training for three of her staff to travel to Helsinborg City, Sweden. This came about when she signed a partnership agreement with the Vera Park Circularity AB (VPC) based in Helsinborg, according to a press statement from the Mayor’s office.
Vera Park is a driving force for sustainable development and innovation. Companies operating within Vera Park’s area receive help with exposure, contacts, collaborations between the business sector and the public sector, and to the academic world.
According to the Partnership Agreement, three (3) employees from the Paynesville City Corporation will have the opportunity of attending a training program in Helsingborg at the facilities for NSR, Nordvastra Skanes Renhallnings AB and VPC. The training is expected to last for approximately one month.
The training, according to the mayor, was made possible through the instrumentality Mrs. Agnes Nilsson and Mrs. Jessica Magnusson. During her travel to Sweden, Mayor Taylor also met the CEO of NSR, Mr. Kim Olsson and discussed possibilities of a waste management plant in Paynesville.
During the training the PCC’s employees will join the daily operation on Waste Management in the City of Helsingborg, to get a greater understanding in Waste Management and its impact on the environment as well as changing of mindset among the people needed to achieve sustainable development. The PCC’s employees will also get a greater understanding on logistics and collection of waste as well as recycling and treatment of waste.
It can be recalled three staff of the PCC travel to Turkey to undergo a training in horticulture. The training was sponsored by the Turkish government.
Education – top priority for Mayor Taylor
For the Mayor, her biggest passion is primary education. She believes that all the gains made would be eroded if the little ones do not possess a good foundation. “I always tell people that if the foundation is not strong, the building will crumble. If people must know and understand how to manage their waste, it boils down to their comprehension.”
Prior to her ascendancy as Mayor, she often led forays and donated educational materials to rundown schools in Todee. As Mayor, she has engaged secondary schools in Paynesville to start an after-school program to help senior students who are writing the WASSCE exams to be adequately equipped. John Lewis Morris United Methodist School is one of such schools benefiting from the program. Initially, it was two schools but only one school has remained committed to the initiative, she added.
The Mayor says she has also started a teacher training program, thanks to the help of Ms. Elaine Saba, a Liberian educator based in Texas, USA. “Teachers were trained how to plan their lessons, how to deal with their students etc.” She revealed that she also renders help to Hope China, a primary school in Duport Road which also teaches Mandarin to its students. On an impromptu visit to the school, she privately donated a generator to power the campus as she noticed some classes were dark.
Outside of her work, Pam Taylor is a mother, a wife and an entrepreneur who believes that the private sector is one of the best places to flourish. “I believe in the private sector, Liberianization and education. To accomplish all of that, you must be nationalistic and patriotic.”
For the foreseeable future, Mayor Taylor believes Paynesville should not be slept on.
Gboko Stewart is a freelance journalist and can be contacted at [email protected]