BY SIMON NDIVE KALLA
Buea-based NGO, known as Association for Community Awareness, ASCOA has partnered with TeamSeas and Ocean Conservancy with support from the Idenau council, the Light, Teksglobal foundation recently rallied youths, volunteers and CBOs to clean up Idenau beach seashore.
Speaking to the press after the exercise, the founder and CEO of ASCOA, Linus Ayangwoh Embe said, “We decide to engage to safe mostly marine life and also the coastline that is the reason we engage in beach cleanup while the reason we chose Idenau is because of the cholera outbreak and Idenau is one of the communities that people’s attentions are focus on when is concern coastline.”
He added that they carried feasibility studies and a workshop was organised on Monday, April 18, 2022 with the inhabitants of Idenau to educate them on the importance of keeping the coast line clean and manage waste.
“We get involved with the Idenau council and also the person in charge of environment in the community. Idenau council is part of this clean up and we try to engage them in the sustainability of what we have done today,” Linus Ayangwoh said.
ASCOA and Idenau council are already working in collaboration to see how they can solve some of these problems affecting this community of which the first problem is that of good toilets in this community.
“We need to educate the community because most of them don’t understand what it means by keeping the environment clean so, subsequently we are going to organise more workshops, do more advocacy for the community so that we can educate them and implement these actions,” Linus Ayangwoh explained.
According to Mukute Samuel one of the team leaders, they are out to make sure that they carry on effective cleaning. He stressed on the fact that, they have taken into consideration all the measures to avoid contamination of any form from bacteria.
“Some of the challenge I have encountered as a group coordinator is in terms of data analysis there are certain things which we find in the beach which are not mentioned in the book sheet for data analyses”,
“So it becomes very challenging. What I did was I improvised, that is, I have added some extract space to the list including others things which are not in the book sheet in other to have a comprehensive data analysis,” Mukute Samuel explained.
On his part, Sunday Etim, an inhabitant of Idenau thanked ASCOA for the initiative. He explained that, the inhabitants living along the beach are suffering from diseases like cholera, malaria, typhoid and a host of other diseases because the Idenau council has little or no attention as regards the wellbeing of its citizens.
“Here at Idenau we have just one toilet and the Idenau council do not put strict measure so people use them anyhow and they mess the toilets making it uncomfortable for others, as regards to the plastic and other dirt along the seashore it not coming from us the inhabitants but instead from travelers who travel on a daily bases”,
“So we are calling on the Idenau council, to place sanctions on anyone found throwing dirt along the beach and also for the council to build enough public toilets around so that people will not have to go to the shore to pass out waste,” Sunday Etim said.