AYV News, September 29, 2025
The Mayor of Freetown, Her Worship Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, has written to Sierra Leone’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Morie Lengor, expressing grave concern over the alarming rise in the number of corpses being discovered on the streets of the capital, reportedly linked to the consumption of Kush.
In her letter, the Mayor noted that while the Freetown City Council has long shouldered the responsibility of providing paupers’ burials for destitute individuals, the situation has escalated drastically since 2022. What was once an occasional tragedy has now become a near-daily occurrence.
Official records reveal that as of 13th August 2025, the Council had collected 142 corpses from the city’s streets, comprising 136 males and 6 females. In less than a month, between 13th August and 11th September, an additional 32 bodies were recorded, 31 male and 1 female. The vast majority of the deceased are young people, a trend the Mayor described as “deeply troubling.”
The surge has forced the Council to establish a dedicated burial team equipped with gloves, disinfectants, masks, body bags, and a fueled vehicle an unbudgeted cost that is placing immense strain on the city’s already limited resources.
The Mayor’s letter calls for urgent government intervention, stressing that the growing number of Kush-related deaths poses not only a public health and safety crisis but also an unsustainable financial burden on the municipality.
