By: Yusuf M Hasan
HARGEISA (Somalilandsun) – The Somaliland capital city can no longer allow breeding of livestock within its confines.
This was announced by Mayor Abdirahman Mahmud Aideed ‘Soltelco’ during the launch of a Hargeisa Municipality sanitation campaign.
Flanked by Councillors Suleiman Dahir, and Hasan Shahar among others during the launch of the campaign Mayor Soltelco warned residents breeding livestock in the city that the municipality shall take into custody them without any rebate.
The menace being addressed by the city municipality engulfs all cities, towns and trading centres in Somaliland where residents are forced to jostle for space.
In a similar exercise a few years back that saw city fathers take over livestock mostly cows and hand them over to the prisons service, the breeders returned to their ways without deterrence.
With the city being home to hundreds of livestock a visitor will never notice the menace since only a few of the stocks are visible in daytime while the majority descend the city to forage for human left over foods promptly from 10 pm every night.
The three days exercise shall see the Hargeisa municipality capture all cows, goats and camels owned and bred by residents while clearing the large amounts of garbage that are slowly swallowing-up various estates
It is hoped that the new initiative by Mayor Soltelco shall bear fruit and rid livestock not only from the capital Hargeisa but all towns in Somaliland as well.
Meanwhile maybe the municipality shall also do something about donkey drivers and their carts that are a city traffic disaster of magnitude in the Making.
If the elimination of these form of goods transportation within the city is impossible, shouldn’t the donkey carts pay road license and their rider forced to acquire driving licenses
This will not only instill traffic rules discipline on the donkey handlers but enlarge wallets of the city coffers as well.
All in all the irony of urban dwelling livestock is that an accident to one will ensue with the owner asking a hefty amount in compensation through argument that the cow or goat was learned in various languages among them English, Arabic, Spanish and Chinese and was in the process of registering for Farsi lessons not to mention road CROSSING and Human Left Over Foods Scavenging TACTICS !
Though Somalilanders are bound to livestock, in a nut shell cities and towns are not the appropriate abode for them.
