By S. Siapha Mulbah
The Joseph Boakai Inauguration Cleanup Campaign Volunteers have ended the cleanup campaign launched in Monrovia.
The exercise, which lasted for more than a month, officially came to an end on Saturday, February 3, 2024 in region seven, with an appreciation ceremony of the volunteers.
After the announcement of the 2023 Presidential Runoff by the National Elections Commission, which saw Joseph Nyuma Boakai emerge as winner, thousands of his supporters engaged into a campaign to clean the city for the inauguration.
During the program, Henry Gray, the Logistics Manager of the project, explained that the volunteers’ action to have signed up for the cleaning exercise shows love and commitment for country that no amount of money can be paid for their services to the nation.
Gray encouraged the volunteers to rally more effort of joining hands with the administration of Boakai to ensure that there is speedy development implementation for the country, so that their dreams and aspirations for a better Liberia is achieved.
According to him, closing the volunteering cleaning campaign does not mean that those who chose to be patriotic through giving back to their country should put stop to participating in other volunteering programs in other parts of the country.
He urged them to continue promoting sanitation as the leadership of the Joseph Nyuma Boakai and Jeremiah Kpan Koung Inauguration Volunteers will work with the government to provide some other opportunities for them in the nearest future.
He thanked them for the initiative and called on others to see volunteering as a way of making impact, saying, “We are grateful that you, the ordinary people, came to the street in your numbers to take charge of the cleaning activities in our city.”
The volunteers expressed gladness to have those leading them during the project appreciating and recognizing their contributions made throughout the entire inauguration.
According to them, the filthy state of the city after the elections became alarming and the transitional team could not be fully relied on to tackle city ordinance along with the inauguration ceremony.
Mary Young, a resident of Sinkor, explained her motivation to the Inquirer Newspaper, saying, “I made myself available to the cleaning up because I knew that Liberia needed my little effort to be clean. There were many guests coming for our President’s inauguration and our city could not be as dirty as it was.”
Ma Mary added that every citizen sees giving their country a branding image during national events, which inspired her to commit her time being part of the volunteers for several weeks cleaning the community.
Jerry Kanneh also maintained that as a supporter to the Unity Party, he was looking forward to contributing to the community before and after the inauguration, so the cleanup created a platform for providing service to the people.
“I feel very happy to be one of those that came out to clean the city. Only we as Liberians can do what will make our country better and no other person can do it for us. We had to do this expecting nothing in return because we needed to show love to our leader and country,” Kanneh said.
