By Nasratu Kargbo
Speaking at a joint parliamentary committee meeting held to solve the land dispute between the New Brookfields Hotel and Milton Margai Technical University (MMTU), along Jomo Kenyatta Road in Freetown, one of the Executive Directors and shareholders of the hotel, Alhaji Ahmed Wurie has blamed the Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs for breaching the lease agreement.
Wurie was on the 22nd of August 2024 responding to a question about them breaching the lease agreement by not increasing their payment by 20% every five years.
“Mr. Chairman you will agree with me that we are not the ones to go and meet the Ministry of Tourism to review the rent, they are the ones who should call us, and if they call us to review the rent we are ready sir. In 2015 they called us and we reviewed the agreement, we are not defaulting’’, Wurie said.
He said originally they had been paying 40 thousand dollars, but that after the review in 2015, they were asked to pay 60 thousand dollars and for a 20 percent increase every five years.
Speaking on the land issue, the Director said that they did not grab the university’s land, but that they were only asking for what they agreed upon and have been paying for.
“The site plan we signed in the agreement divided the place into plots one and two, which were occupied by the hotel and university, respectively. The fence you see was not put up by us or the government but by a Special, Court to protect their witnesses, with the promise that it would be put down when they leave, unfortunately, that did not happen. So, I believe the college has taken that boundary to be the boundary, but it is not the boundary” he explained.
He added that they have no business with plot two, and are asking for the remaining part of their space, stating that they have been on this issue for ten years now.
Explaining what led to them leasing the New Brookfields Hotel, Wurie recalled that in 1995 they (a group of Sierra Leoneans) got a twenty-five-year lease for Bintumani Hotel which they rehabilitated and ran it for two years before the AFRC coup took place, stating that by the time they came back after the war, the hotel had already been given to the Chinese.
He said after a series of deliberations with the government, the New Brookfields Hotel was offered to them, which according to him was half the size of what they had at Bintumani.
Wurie said they got the hotel in 2000 but did not get access until 2010 because institutions such as the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Special Court, Ministry of Fisheries, and Civil Defence Forces occupied the space for different courses of time.
He said at that time, they had already spent their money in Bintumani and needed investors, saying they started rehabilitation in 2012 but operations were affected by the Ebola outbreak.
“Hilltop Hotels Group Limited is a purely Sierra Leonean company, we had to look for investors to help us, and that was how we got in touch with KG and S which bought shares at Hilltop”
Highlighting the nationalities of the owners of the hotel, the Executive Director stated that seven of the owners are Sierra Leoneans, two British, an Irish, and a Jamaican.
In a joint committee meeting held by the Committee of Tertiary and Higher Education and Committee of Tourism Cultural Affairs in Parliament on the 13th of August 2024 to understand the issue of the land dispute between the university and hotel, the Chairman of the Education Committee. Joseph William Lamin whilst looking at the agreement said the hotel breached Clause 2(2) of the agreement, which states that the hotel was supposed to increase the pay by twenty percent (20%) after every five years, which they have not done over the years.
He stated that in 2015 the hotel had paid 60 thousand dollars and did the same in 2020, noting that five years later they did not increase the 20 percent as stated in the agreement.
Speaking on other contraventions made, the chairman quoted Clause 2(9) of the agreement which speaks on avoiding annoyance, nuisance, damage, inconvenience, and disturbing of neighbour, but noted that based on the pictorial evidence presented the hotel had contravened that clause.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (28/08/24)
