September 26, 2017 By Patrick Jaiah Kamara
Madam Jallow
EPA Executive director being interview on the beach.
The Environment Protection Agency (EPA), together with National Tourist Board (NTB), has on last Saturday (23rd September) organized a cleaning exercise at the Aberdeen/Lumley beach.
According to the Executive Director of EPA, Madam Jattu Jallow, the purpose of gathering volunteers from various communities was to clean up the beach so that it would continue to attract tourists.
She said the country’s beach was among the finest in the world and that it behooves on Sierra Leoneans to clean it, so that the environment would be friendly and healthy.
“Sierra Leone beach is among the most beautiful beaches in the world and if we continue to litter it, we may be driving away tourists and it would even endanger our health. We want to turn this country into an environmental friendly country that is why we have initiated this idea,” he said.
Earlier, Yassim Kargbo, General Manager of the NTB, said they collaborated with EPA to organize the national cleaning campaign in order to keep the beach litter -free.
He said the NTB used to clean up and guard the beach that was why they employed beach marshals to help monitor the surroundings.
He thanked the EPA director for collaborating with them to cleaning the beach, thus urging the agency to continue working with them so that the beaches would be human friendly
“If we keep the environment clean, it would be good with us but if we are hard on it, it would also be replicated to us. If the environment is hard on us, it would cost us loss of lives and property as it happens recently. Environment impact causes flooding, earthquake, and flooding. All these are caused by man’s activities,” he said.
He said Lumley beach was the major tourist attraction area and that it must be kept clean so that everybody would be happy to visit it.
He cautioned that the NTB was just a custodian but that the beach belongs to every citizen and that environmental issues should be solved by everyone.
On her part, Fatmate Sagay, Deputy General Manager of NTB, said the cleaning exercise was burned out of the fact that the environment was an essential part of the people and that it must be protected in order to save lives.
She said though monitoring the beach was difficult, they were working with the EPA to ensure effective monitoring strategies.