Lusaka city’s alleys a health risk - residents

LUSAKA residents have complained a out the filth in most of the city centre’s alleys which they said posed serious threat of disease outbreak.

The residents said that most alleys in the central business district were filled with faecal matter ecause the traders and call oys used them to answer the call of nature.

resident, Ms gness halwe, o served that the capital city had lost status as a garden city ecause of filthy caused by uncollected garbage, blocked drainages and indiscriminate defecation y people trading in the city centre.

wish to actually warn people against passing through the alleys ecause there is human e creta everywhere, said Ms halwe. Ms halwe said the plans y the late usa a Mayor, Wilson Kalumba, to clean up the alleys and relocate the street vendors to trade from there, would have helped eep them clean as no one would have een using them as toilets anymore. Mr Arnold Chola, another resident, said the street vendors in the usiness district were using empty opa ue eer pac s to answer the call of nature which they later disposed of in the alleys. Mr hola wondered why the usa a ity ouncil was uiet a out the matter when it new what e actly was going on. e said that what was of concern was the fact that some women trading in the Mun oyo traditional drink actually picked up the bottles used to urinate and reused them to pack their commodity. Mr Chola called on the Ministry of ocal overnment to stiffen the laws on pu lic nuisance to help improve the standards of hygiene especially in the central business district. And Caristo Banda, another resident, recommended to the local authority to transform the city centre alleys into trading spaces for vendors in order to clean them up.

ransformation of the alleys would help restore cleanliness and hygiene around the city centre, he said.

t would e easy to implement the eep am ia lean campaign once the vendors have een relocated to the alleys, said Mr Banda.