HYSACAM Begins Operation To Keep Bamenda Clean Again

- November 26, 2019

Martial Gnoukapasi

Hysacam at work

At the Bamenda Nkwen market Sunday November 24th where HYSACAM showed up to resume for the 3rd time this year, their mission of garbage collection after a number of incidences deprived them from sanitizing the city, one upon arrival was greeted by a disagreeable smell emanating from a heap of garbage that had piled up for months.

The black liquid ouzing out of it was visibly having a romance with the perishable and non perishable food items displayed by some petty traders around the market.

They knew it will take not more than a day for hysacam to do what they're rightfully supposed to do.

Traders closest to dumpsters watching hysacam at work

MNews237 caught up with some operating businesses closest to the over flooded dumpsters, who expressed their satisfaction, the challenges they faced and the coping mechanisms they had employed to better the situation, before the clean up campaign outing by hysacam to clear the garbage that was already posing a serious health threats to people in the city of Bamenda.

Trader 1" It was inconveniencing us alot. Even cars couldn't pass because the thrash had extended into the main road. Business was slow as people refused to come to us because of the smell coming out from garbage....... If we had not warned people to stop dumping garbage here, it would've been more than this. There were times we try reducing by burning.....With the liquid flowing from there, i had to place a series of bags on the ground before I displaced my tomatoes and other items..... But am happy they're clearing the garbage now. When I came and saw hysacam workers with their equipments, I was so happy"

clearing heap at nkwen market

Trader 2: "we thank them for coming. The problem is I don't know if they're back for good or not.

Untill now it hasn't been easy. We use to come out every Monday and at least clear the pile that was blocking the road. The mad man you see on top of the garbage sleeps there and use to burn it once in a while. That helped to reduce it"

Trader 3. The smell and ordour alone was a serious health hazard. The raining season made it worst because the dirty water from it could've intoxicated our products if we didn't employ preventive measures.... At times when they burn it's difficult to be here. So what I do is ensure that I take enough water and drink enough milk and eat food containing vegetable oil when I get home. Others have had respiratory problems just because of the garbage....We are happy they're clearing the waste though. This is a feasting period and time for us to make enough sales. We'll have enough space to display our products now"

Hysacam workers at work

In the meantime the director of HYSACAM Zamu Joseph who's supervising the clean up campaign exercise on the field said 2019 has been a very difficult year for the company in Bamenda.

"It hasn't been easy with us and we've had a series of incidences that have pushed us to stop activities three times this year. Each time we've stopped we've started....... Recommendations were taken to ensure we run our activisties smoothly in the city council session of July this year, though the crisis has prevented us from executing some. We also had issues with land. Sometime around September, a municipal order was signed by the government delegate to the Bamenda city council, instructing us to use the swamp in mulang as dump site but there was this problem of the land belonging to someone else. We went back to the mbelewa site in mile 4 and had another issue. ... We had to start this time around. With cholera announced some regions of Cameroon, we had to swing into action. The dry season is here and will bring about flies and other airborne diseases so we had no choice. We hope to continue doing our work without further interruptions"