The streets of Gabon’s capital Libreville look like a rubbish dump. The issue being that the company in charge of garbage collection is struggling to clear the waste. On top of leaving a nauseating smell across the city, this phenomenon has created a breeding ground for disease.

 

For several weeks now, Sovog, the company in charge of collecting general waste in Gabon, has been the subject of a lot of talk in Libreville. This company, which has held an exclusive contract to collect general and household rubbish in the Gabonese city since 2002, has attracted attention for its inability to carry out this task.

 

When contacted by FRANCE 24 on October 16th, Sovog’s management stated that: “the rubbish problem had been definitively solved last weekend.” “All these images of rubbish piles that the local press is feasting on were taken in the past,” Franck Gibaud, the deputy director general of Sovog, announced solemnly. “The situation deteriorated over the past few days because of the insensitive behaviour of some companies – medium and large supermarkets, for example. Instead of paying private companies to take their garbage to the rubbish tip, they prefer to leave them at Sovog’s collection points, which are normally reserved for household rubbish.”

 

However, 48 hours after everything was supposed to be “back in order”, our Observer in Libreville, Marc Ona Essangui, took these images, providing proof that the streets of the capital continue to be swamped with rubbish. The photos and the videos shown here show heaps of garbage strewn along the streets, sometimes in the vicinity of schools.

 

 

 

There is only one public rubbish dump in Libreville, in the suburb of Mindoubé. Although it reached its capacity several years ago, the dump continues to take in the incessant flow of garbage. To put a stop to this, Sovog has called on the government to build a rubbish treatment plant nearby. This request has so far gone unanswered.