Published: August 6, 2024
Kakata – Newly appointed Kakata City Mayor Gbarngawoe Eddie Seyboe is under serious pressure from residents to start implementing measures, policies, and strategies for maintaining a clean city and decongesting streets caused by commercial drivers and street vendors.
By Emmanuel Degleh, Contributing Writer
The locals’ calls come amid little or no effort by the previous city administration to clean Kakata, which has led to a dirty city for the past six years of Weah’s administration. Many residents of Kakata doubt whether Seyboe will be an effective city mayor, given his 14 years of service as City Manager under two former city mayors.
Former Mayor Emmanuel Goll stated that the garbage in the streets of Kakata overwhelmed his administration’s efforts to maintain a clean city due to a lack of support from the county administration and central government. The municipal taxes collected were insufficient to enable the Kakata City Corporation to work effectively. Goll complained about the lack of support but failed to outsource garbage collection to a sanitation company, as his predecessor Eddie Murphy did.
The situation has sparked mixed reactions on social media from people connected to Kakata, both at home and abroad.
Maxwell Tamba Sahr writes, “The waste in the streets of Kakata city is alarming. The mayor needs to wear his or her rain suit and empower more sanitation workers to clean the streets of Kakata. Before it gets worse, sooner is the best.”
Christiana Jackson, a resident of Kakata, also took to her Facebook page to comment, “The mayor is not the problem but the citizens of Kakata.”
Newly appointed Kakata City Mayor Gbarngawoe Eddie Seybo
On a local radio morning show in Kakata, Daniscious Dennis expressed his disappointment that some workers of the Kakata City Corporation were collecting money to allow people to sell on the street. “Those in the Kakata City Corporation collecting yearly fees from people to allow in the street instead of the market must stop, and the new mayor must ensure that doesn’t happen again,” Dennis noted.
Speaking on a local radio station days after his official appointment, Mayor Seyboe acknowledged taking over a city with key challenges, including a dirty environment that has persisted for the past six years. “We intend to have sustainable waste management control. Since 2010, people have continued taking the dirt from their homes to the street,” he lamented.
Seyboe disclosed that he is on the verge of concluding a deal to procure a mini dump truck to address the timely collection of garbage, a condition that seems to have overwhelmed the efforts of his predecessor. He noted that the issue of Kakata’s filthiness is a mindset issue, as most of the garbage is brought from the community to the street. He promised to work with the community, putting measures in place for every community to take responsibility for maintaining the cleanliness of the city.
Mayor Seyboe further disclosed efforts to reconnect Kakata’s sister city relationship with the U.S. city of Brooklyn Park in a bid to harness support for some of the challenges facing Kakata.
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