The coastline is drawing closer to homes along the beach, Sierra Leone. Captions and Photo source: © Tommy Trenchard / IRIN
Excerpts;
With a distance of about ten miles and approximately (16km) from the heart of the capital city of Freetown in the deep west, here lies the Lakka community hosting more than four thousand people. This community can no longer accommodate the people living along the beach because of the indiscriminate sand mining here.
The beaches are owned by the government of Sierra Leone thereby making the sand public property, and this has led to the mad rush for sand. There is presently a policy on the use of Sierra Leone’s natural resources but there is no specific policy on the use of the sand at the country’s natural beaches.
In Pictures: Beach Sand Mining in Sierra Leone, BBC News (Uploaded 01-10-2013)
Sand-Mining Threatens Homes And Livelihoods In Sierra Leone, IRIN (Uploaded 02-27-2013)
Round-the-clock sand-mining on beaches within a few kilometres of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown is having a devastating effect on the coastline, destroying property, and damaging the area’s hopes of a tourism revival…
