KMC Mayor, His Lordship Talib Bensouda, is a man of high aesthetic taste. One of the first things he tried to do when he became Mayor was to beautify the main thoroughfare called Westfield with green spots of flower pots and Bahamas grass patches. We are sure the Lord Mayor wanted greenery and green spaces to become part of the KMC landscape.
This is indeed laudable.
Sadly, some people do not want to help maintain this beautification. Almost every day, a flower pot is smashed to smithereens by uncouth motorists. The flower pots are indeed suffering from the frontal assault by the speeding or unruly motorists.
The smashed flower pots symbolize what is not good in this country; while some are busy beautifying our environment, some are busy destroying. In other words as some gather, others scatter.
In 2006, the despot Yahya AJJ Jammeh introduced snappy traffic lights, and street lights along the main roads in the KM in readiness for the African Union Summit hosted by Banjul that year. There were close to ten traffic light batteries in this conurbation, replete with red, green and yellow! The streets along the Coastal Road from the airport, and through Serekunda had neat rows of street lights.
Suddenly, these nice infrastructure were also been hit by motorists one by one. Today, as we write these lines, there is only one working traffic light set in the entire Republic of The Gambia. In 2006 we had close to ten. What a loss! You can measure how much a country is working, simply by seeing if its traffic lights are working.
A country cannot grow when some want to bring beauty and sense of order while others want to thrive in chaos.
If it does not already exist, the KMC should formulate strict regulations which will punish the destroyers of beautiful spots including graffiti sprayers. This will be one sure way of protecting not only the nice flower pots along the Westfield, but other urban beautifications.
We continue to encourage the Lord Mayor to do more flower pots and Bahamas spots to encourage sights of our largest municipality.