BY SIMON NDIVE KALLA
As Cameroon joined the world to celebrate World Oceans Day on June 8, 2023 tagged “Tides are changing”. A Non Governmental Organization, known as Association of Community Awareness, ASCOA, rallied youths to picked about 300kgs of assorted waist from the coast of Limbola Beach in Limbe II Subdivision on Saturday June 10, 2023
Aside the above-mentioned quantity of waste, the volunteers also cleared the Coastline off some organic debris washed off by the ocean waves. The World continue to decry the rapid take-over of pollutants in our ocean with plastic leading the log with about 14 Million tons of plastic ending up in the ocean yearly.
The CEO and founder of ASCOA, Linus Ayangwoh Embe believes they have done a lot at Limbola coastline, while saying that the initial plan was not only to keep the coastline clean but to create more awareness.
Linus Ayangwoh added that, ASCOA is trying to create awareness so that other civil society organisations can copy from them, and also try to bring more community members on board so that in the future, they can carry out the activity.
“In ASCOA we have five focus areas, environmental protection is one of our focus area so what we’re doing today relate to one of the focus which is environmental protection.” Linus Ayangwoh explained.
The project officer Kunde Emelda said it is not only on World Ocean Day that plastics should be pick around the Beach that is why they go around to sensitize the population about plastic pollution
She added that cleaning the coastline is very important because without an Ocean there is no livelihood. Kunde stated that 90% of protein is gotten from the Ocean so it is normal to protect and clean the coastline.
On his part, the health director of ASCOA Anye Akuma said they deemed it necessary to clean the beach inorder to showcase a clean beach. He explained that they decided to choose Limbola Beach because it is a touristic area which harbor a lot of tourists and equally because of it close nature to the population and has a lot of pollution.