The President His Excellency Adama Barrow last weekend impressed the entire country by taking a lead role in the set-settal (cleaning exercise) of Banjul.
The President was accompanied in this magnificent and patriotic gesture by cabinet ministers and citizens of our capital city.
We believe that the set-settal which used to happen during the Second Republic should come back. Cleanliness is next to godliness!
We cannot live in an environment where all you see is littered, littered and littered. When you tour every street in Banjul, Serrekunda, and other urban setups, all you see is garbage piling up.
When we say garbage, we mean all kinds of garbage including solid garbage, unclean water. And more so the problems of old and derelict vehicles parked everywhere. In fact, it seems that there are more derelict vehicles parked everywhere, every corner of our streets than there are vehicles on the roads. This is serious the vehicles are parked in derail systems there are lot of metal eroded corroded and some of these metals are heavy ones they go into our water circles that can be dangerous to our health.
Your Excellency, you said we should find a nomenclature for cleaning exercise, I want to tell you that the current word already exists – it is set-settal this word encompasses the spirit of togetherness, of cleanliness, of a healthy environment and healthy community
Therefore, we urged you to take this up at the cabinet level so that as early as possible a national set-settal day is taken to the National Assembly so that it can be codified and become a permanent fixture, a permanent aspect in our calendar, it could be monthly, quarterly, or every two months. The cabinet will decide and the National Assembly will pass it into law. something that has not happened in the past was that this cleaning day or set-settal was just an executive order. Now if we take it high up to get cabinet approval and take it to the National Assembly then it will become abiding, non-political and it will become a national issue.
However, we applaud your exemplary move of the last weekend in Banjul, we believe Banjul is just the beginning and cannot be the end so we urge all Gambians to clean their environment as our President has shown the way!