Bopolu Takes ‘City Face’

By Esau J. Farr

The city of Bopolu is said to be on the road of development as it is being given a new look to represent an emerging urban settlement.

According to a local journalist in the city, Damoi Nyankoi, the new City Mayor of Bopolu is leaving no stone unturned in making Bopolu one of the enviable cities in Liberia as he has begun carrying out cleaning up activities and other initiatives meant to improve the city.

Mayor Zinnah Norman is reported to have deployed about twenty empty drums in major street corners of the city to be used by residents of Bopolu as trash cans to help keep the city clean and safe for residents and visitors.

The local journalist in the area quoted the Mayor as telling all residents of the city to strive for safe environment by cleaning their surroundings at all times, something residents of Bopolu are said to be cooperating for the general good of all citizens.

The issue of hygiene and sanitation practice has and continues to be a major challenge confronting Liberia with many not either aware of the danger disregard of proper hygiene practices poses to the society and its inhabitants or deliberately done out of carelessness.

The measures put in place for the cleaning up of garbage and huge piles of dirt and wastes came few days to the celebrations of World’s Hands Washing Day in the area.

October 15 each year is celebrated worldwide as World’s Hands Washing Day. The day was set aside by the United Nations in a resolution mean to give attention to hands washing as one of the surest ways of combating and reducing diarrhea and other diseases.

Programs befitting the celebrations was organized by concerned government agencies, coordinators of the Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) Sector and partners of the government of Liberia on Monday, October 15, 2018 in commemoration of the day.

It is reported that only one out of five persons washes hands globally; something health practitioners and environmentalists have frowned at calling on all to be agents of change in the sector.

It can be recalled that average Liberians actually begun to learn how to wash their hands regularly during the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in 2014 something that is even now hardly being seen done by them after the Ebola crisis in Liberia mid-2015.

Despite public awareness on the continue washing of hands of people, many tend to down play the practice sometimes as a result of ignorance, carelessness and laziness amongst others.