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Blame
political leaders for the collapse of strategic bridge
Friday,
November 10, 2006
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
One just doesn't
forget certain things. How can they when it is part
and parcel of their life from the time they learned
how to crawl, to the time they also learned how to say
their first word.
My memories of the bridge that just collapsed
in Monrovia are profound, and are like others who grew
up or once lived in that part of Liberia traveling on
it from point A to point B.
Waterside bridge
collapses
I used to walk on the bridge when there were no
vehicles to take me to and from my destinations. Like
others, I rode in buses, taxis and private vehicles on
it many times and saw its value as an identifiable
national treasure that connected one part of our
nation’s capital to the other.
Some of us have seen that bridge countless
times when we lived there, and admired its toughness
under pressure when it carried the weight of an entire
nation.
Some knew it as the Vai Town Bridge, while
others referred to it as the Waterside Bridge.
However, most Monrovians saw it as a fixture that
became part of their daily activities.
We touched it, we held onto it and lean on it
as we gazed directly at the living and dead organisms
that became the victims of the way we treat our
environment, even as it became a makeshift market
where people traded their goods for the little they
could get to support a family.
Under the bridge was like a town – a tale of
two cities where some of our brothers and sisters made
it their home by living under its terribly dilapidated
structure day in and day out after things fell apart
around them.
Those individuals fished in its contaminated
waters infested with human feces, and surrounded by
bulk of garbage next door to the shantytown, West
Point.
They cooked underneath it, and bathed
underneath it, and used the bathroom right there as
passengers in vehicles glances and moves on to their
destination as if they didn’t see a thing.
The warring factions shot at it and killed on
top of it during that now infamous bloody campaign to
seize Monrovia and all of Liberia.
The “Waterside” Bridge was strategic, and a
gateway to international commerce. From one direction
are major local trading centers, while the other end
was the National Port Authority, a major hub for
international trade and commerce and also the scene of
profitable local marketing activities.
So why did we ignore the bridge? Why did
successive national governments not do preventative
maintenance of a bridge of such strategic and economic
value?
Just as others would look to the sun and the
moon, or would refer to local or international events
to recollect or trace a key event in their lives, the
50-year old bridge reminded many Liberians about events
in their own lives as they often would put one-and-one
together to remember some things that happened years
ago, (the age of a son or daughter) one of whom was
born around the same time the bridge was built.
The usefulness of the bridge built 12 years
after President Tubman ascended to the nation’s
highest office in 1944, is not around anymore. The
bridge retired itself recently when it collapsed into
the river it rests over since 1956; around the same
area believed the Old New Kru Town was built before it
was relocated to its current location.
The Waterside Bridge, Vai Town Bridge or
whatever name one cherishes in their memory preceded
Presidents Tubman, Tolbert, Doe, Taylor; all the
interim governments and the Sirleaf administration,
and was constantly ignored by those presidents who did
not think it needed maintenance work done on it, and
did not even attempt to replace it to save the nation
any future headache and inconvenience as it is now
experiencing.
In fairness to President Sirleaf, she just
became president 10 months ago so one shouldn't blame her
and her government for not maintaining the bridge.
However, what we can do now is to encourage and
work with the president to find the funds needed to
hire competent contractors and subcontractors to get
to work and build the bridge as soon as they can, to
alleviate the Liberian people anymore pain and
suffering so as not to put pressure on the other
bridge named after Gabriel Tucker, the former Minister
of Public Works, which is about 30 years old.
Now the question is, if a bridge in the
nation’s capital located right in front of its
national political leaders was ignored and not
maintained for all these years until it collapsed,
what can one say about the other bridges around the
country like the major bridge in Seebeh near
Greenville, Sinoe County, which was built in the early
1960s, and not in the bull eye’s of the political
leaders to be given some kind of attention?
The lesson learned from the collapsed of the
Waterside Bridge is incompetence, negligence and the
obvious lack of maintenance.
Another reminder of how our political leaders
failed us.
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