The Actors Behind Kakata City Main Streets Decongestion

By Ramsey N Singbeh Jr

Email: director@news.throngtalk.com

Contact: +231772641146 / 880147358

Before the latter part of 2024, the main streets of Kakata, the capital City of Margibi County was an annoying and a disgusting place for people to encounter.

The streets had drivers (motorcyclists included) and street sellers just spread all along the road, looking for passengers and selling.

Some of the people dumped just whatever thing they could either on or near the road such as wastes from fish cartoons, garbage from the communities, plastics etc.

The former City Mayor Emmanuel Goll also selected the very main streets for the dirt to be stockpiled before further taking to where it has been thrown away.

This situation created a very bad scene and made the streets to be unlikely odorous.

At times, traffic was unnecessarily jammed for a while due to people’s encroachment on the main road.

Drivers could pack anywhere at any time along the road whether the place is a bus stop or not. City Police of Kakata were many days observed arresting people and their goods and services that created hindrance and free movement for others in the main streets.

The streets were very noisy with people selling and transferring songs from computers to memory cards, phones or computer chips.

Most of them had their songs being loosely played anyhow creating uneasiness form some of the people and on the other hand, entertaining some of the people.

But when President Joseph Nyumah Boakai’s administration under the Ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs appointed the Rev Gbarngawoe Eddie Seboe and Mr. Patrick B Kormazu as City Mayor of Kakata and Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) for Margibi, the situation shifted to its improved stage.

The office of the Kakata City Corporation has closely worked in line with the office of ACP Kormazu to decongest the streets of Kakata.

The streets are now experiencing free movement, some level of cleanliness and orderliness.

All the efforts, Throngtalk News Bureau has gathered were made by the two collaborators (Mayor Seboe and ACP Kormazu), their partners and supporters.

Kakata City Mayor, Rev Gbarngawoe Eddie Seboe

Speaking to the Kakata City New Mayor, Rev Gbarngawoe Eddie Seboe about the decongestion in the very recent time, he explained: “The first thing we did, we had a consultative meeting. We met the stakeholders, in fact those who were actually going to be affected by the decongestion, we had a conversation with the police, the joint security, the marketers, politicians, our lawmakers presenting our immediate emergency plan to them first of all because it took us one month and we got nearly everyone involved into the process, even the journalist, we had a meet with them.”

He said they shared their ideas with all the folks regarding the decongestion of Kakata which is a very major streets that connects Liberia to Monrovia because almost everybody has to pass through Kakata.

He explained that the deployable and congested nature of the streets caught their attention when they took over, making it their immediate emergency plan which lasts for about twelve (12) months.

He added that the plan considers organizing and decongesting the streets to enable people have access to goods and services without any kind of delay or interference.

The mayor who served as the administrative assistant to two mayors (Emmanuel Goll and Eddie Z Murphay) before his ascendency, emphasized that the streets were disorganized with petit traders on the major routes and also having the pedestrian lanes jammed packed with people selling anything anywhere at their will.

This, he noted challenged them to workout modalities in decongesting the streets of Kakata.

ACP, Margibi, Patrick B Kormazu

For his part, ACP Patrick B Kormazu narrated: “This exercise is our strategy that has to do with public safety. Public safety issue is of concern, that which falls in the preview of the Liberia National Police. Upon that backdrop, we tend to initiate this exercise of decongesting the road way of marketers and that of vehicle operators that have been using the road for parking lot and those marketers using the main streets for selling.”

The Margibi County Head of the Liberia National Police who is always patrolling the streets of Kakata both at nights and during the day with some of the officers to ensure that the people don’t violate the order instituted by the police and the city corporation maintained that they took the proactive measures aimed at ensuring that the road way are cleared and people are safe while vehicles ply the streets.

Police At Work In Kakata Main Street

He informed our reporter that they collaboratively worked with the city government to have the streets decongested.

He said the manpower strength of the police in the area is low but they are committed to ensuring that the exercise is sustained.

 He explained that it was initially seen as a bad move by some of the people but at the moment, their efforts are being appreciated by people in Kakata and from elsewhere.

About The Author

NEWS

See author's posts