The Bamenda City Council has taken responsible waste management to the streets, using some close to 200 holiday makers to send out messages to the public, calling on people to, among other practices, shun the following:

- Spontaneous creation of illegal dump sites along streets. - Non-respect of set-down hygiene and sanitation rules and regulations. - Dumping in streams, rivers, and even on the ground just besides garbage cans. - Instinctive littering of streets, business premises and offices.

The aim of this exercise is to make Bamenda citizens understand that each person’s waste is first and foremost their own creation and responsibility. As such, families and businesses are being encouraged to own dust bins, and to bring out garbage only at stipulated times, the objective being to seek alternative means of individual family garbage management, through composting of especially organic waste, for subsequent use in farms and gardens.

For the next three days, holiday makers shall carry these messages through the three Sub Divisional Council areas, targeting markets, major streets and major poles of attraction. Then after, the media houses shall carry on with this campaign, especially the specialized Pidgin English programmes of the many private FM radio stations of the City of Bamenda.

It should be reminded that the Bamenda City Council has sub-contracted the cleaning of the streets and the grubbing of gutters to some four local companies that employ about 150 people, who gather about 100 tons of garbage every day, which City Council garbage vans collect to dispose of at the landfill in the Nkwen neighbourhood.

Corporate social responsibility The 200 holiday makers at the heart of this campaign have been on road-side cleaning holiday jobs with the Bamenda City Council for the past one month running, having been drawn from the three Sub Divisional Councils: Bamenda I – Bamendakwe, 50; Bamenda II - Mankon, 150; Bamenda III – Nkwen, 50.

This is the moment when most of these students are open to all kinds of temptations and idleness, and keeping them gainfully busy is the bottom line of this initiative. Also, using these youngsters offers an opportunity for them to explain basic hygiene and sanitation messages to their parents, most of whom betray a lot of ignorance on the proper home management of home-generated waste.

The holiday job initiative comes to an end with the payment on the 5th of August 2014 of some CFA ten million (10,000,000) to these 200 students, a social contribution from the Bamenda City Council ahead of the next academic year.