Yaounde battles with sanitation issues

Waste disposal has become a major worry in some neighbourhoods of the Nation's capital, Yaounde.

Overflowing bins and heaps of dirt along pavements are the order of the day in some neighbourhoods.

The lack of sufficient public waste bins has led to the littering of streets by inhabitants. A seamstress in one of the affected neighbourhoods says, this exposes health hazards to people in the vicinity with regards to food contamination and skin diseases.

Others say the company in charge of waste disposal has neither provided enough bins nor presented a patrol schedule, causing them to cross over several metres to dispose off waste.

A roadside vendor, Severin Sonkouat explained that he spends between 500 to 1000 CFAF weekly in paying someone to empty his trash.

Another concerned inhabitant frowns on the situation of poor waste disposal, saying it is dangerous especially to children who are exposed to the dirt as they play around.

The marketplaces are not left out of the picture as one can find abandoned heaps of dirt close to food items on sale.

As inhabitants of Yaounde ponder over ways to reduce the littering, experts in environmental issues are also perturbed.

An expert at the Ministry of Environment and Protection of Nature indicates that the inadequate civic education of some individuals and poor projection by the councils account for the inadequate waste disposal.

In this light, the environmental expert calls on Cameroonians to cautiously dispose waste and avoid littering. He also exhorted the councils to reorganize the distribution of dustbins along the town, while respecting the norms which allocate a certain ratio of dustbins to a number of people at a particular distance.