By Isaac Massaquoi
In the last few weeks, I haven't been to any government office, including Youyi Building without seeing a nicely wrapped, so-called Christmas box into which every visitor is expected, even required, to drop some money for the benefit of the organisers of this sophisticated begging project which to me is just like those aggressive ones near the Bank of Sierra Leone or at all our petrol stations in this country.
At the same time, envelops and dash cards from all sorts of organisations ranging from churches to youth groups and schools in particular, are being dropped on every doorstep with amazing rapidity and the collectors are a really tough breed. They literally harass their victims into parting with cash. I can't even begin to imagine what politicians and business houses are going through at times like this. They have either erected more official barricades to their offices or have simply abandoned their ministries with all the consequences for service delivery that brings along.
I know that in many parts of the Christian world, Christmas is a time when people exchange gifts to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. I emphasise the word EXCHANGE here. Indeed these are very busy times for postal systems in the West in particular. They must deliver millions of Christmas parcels on time. I am not talking about this one way street we have in those Christmas boxes, envelops and dash cards that meet people throughout Sierra Leone at every turn.
These boxes are normally put there by the staff of those institutions who make every effort to draw the attention of everyone passing by or visiting, to those boxes so that they could put some money in. If the authorities running government ministries and agencies think it's fun, I don't think it is.
May be it's already late but all such civilised begging should be immediately banned from government offices. In the same was as physically-challenged people hanging at the entrance to Youyi Building asking for alms should be moved on.
I can't understand why our officials are not terribly offended by their secretaries and messengers holding out Christmas boxes for money to even total strangers. I suspect they accept the practice as part of the festive season, so that people like me who find it very shameful and have grumbled about it, should try and adjust to living in a country where Christmas boxes appear every year, not for charity but for people to stuff their pockets and be merry on the beach.
In some countries, this is the time when Charities raise a lot of money. They tap into the Christian values that encourage people who profess the faith to help their less-fortunate brethren because Jesus Christ himself said "whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, that you do unto to me". Let nobody tell me the people who collect monies in those Christmas boxes are the least of our brethren.
Every parent feels the pressure of envelops brought home by their children throughout the year. And there is something I still can't understand about the way envelops are given to children for projects ranging from building a new classroom block, buying toiletries, funding sports meetings to thanksgiving services. The school authorities give every pupil two, in some cases three envelops. Here's how it's distributed - the child gets one, and both parents get one each.
In reality, the school is asking the parents to pay three times for the same projects because the child has no income and, invariably, it's one parent that services all three envelops. That tactic, to me has no human face given the income levels in this country and the fact that people are committed to the extended family system. So it is possible that one man with five children attending different schools could end up servicing 15 envelops plus an equal number from five extended family members in rapid succession. The system is crazy.
Many parents are worried that they are constantly being asked to pay for certain facilities in schools that are clearly the responsibility of the government. Historically, parents have always helped schools deliver high quality education to their children but when parents are taxed using an endless string of envelops for all sorts of projects throughout the year, I am compelled to ask just where the government is in all this and whether these "taxes" which are collected in such aggressive manner have not contributed to truancy and even dropouts mainly among children of low income parents.
The other money-making instrument is the dash card. I doubt whether I am not the only person who remembers that towards the end of his presidency, Joseph Saidu Momoh, whom hardly anybody talks about these days in national conversations, actually banned dash cards after loud cries against the use of such cards for bogus fund-raisers. He was himself probably fed up with having to part with money in dash cards and decided to stop it.
His argument in public was that the tactic had lost its innocence and it was clear that criminals had entered the business and were feeding on the generosity of the ordinary Sierra Leonean. Before Momoh's ban, people who were seen collecting cash for projects that on the face of it looked good, were known to have corrupted the whole idea by simply refusing to be accountable to the membership of whatever organisation they claimed to be representing.
Dash cards have since returned with frightening intensity and with improved technology, they are packaged and presented so convincingly that even the most tight-fisted individual is persuaded to contribute to what is essentially a scam presented as support to either a project for the deaf, dumb and blind or a new house of worship somewhere.
Once I found myself constantly contributing money for the "development" of a football team I had never seen in action. I paid varying sums of money to about three boys in the neighbourhood of a community in which I lived for about eight years. I suddenly realised that every time I drove past the same boys on my way to work, they called me different names. They called me MANAGER, CELEBRITY, ICON, PAPAY and so on. I waved back in acknowledgement but completely confused as to whether I was really the man they thought they were talking to. I was to learn later that they were softening me up before presenting me with their proposal for the so-called community football team.
When the proposal finally came, it had some league table attached to it showing that unlike Manchester United or Tottenham Hotspur in the current Barclays Premier League season, the team was doing extremely well but they needed cash to keep the momentum going and possibly win the league. Somehow, I always had my suspicions about accountability in a football team in which only three people in the executive went around collecting cash from sponsors and a club that had been in existence before I moved into the community had no bank accounts into which somebody like me would have loved to deposit money.
I don't get easily moved by such overt attempts to drill money out of my pocket by giving me names I have absolutely nothing to do with, but I gave money to the three-man group several times only to maintain some relationship with the young people of the community. Those who lived in Freetown during the war years would understand why it's always a reasonable thing to keep in touch with people like those. Now, when I eventually turned up at the training ground of the National Stadium to watch the team play, according to their own fixtures, there was no match and no such football league. You can probably guess that I wasn't surprised at all even if disappointed.
There are many people who have a similar experience with young people asking for support to launch a music career, undertake cleaning projects and pay examination fees that are all fake. But for the same reason I parted with cash, they too are doing same.
So we have a situation where in many corners, people are devising new methods daily to take money out of the pockets of others. While I can afford to avoid the young boys who hang in street corners using sycophantic slogans to get money, it becomes a more serious problem when children are forced out of school because their parents can't always service the string of envelops and dash cards that reaches them throughout the year. The Minister of Education must not pretend not to know this is happening. This is more corrosive to education delivery that ghost teachers whom he has spent the last six years looking for without finding.
And as far as the Christmas boxes are concerned, they should be banned now. Charities can come together and raise funds at a time like this for clearly-explained causes with the approval of their supervising ministries. The attitude of a few corrupt people has already given all Sierra Leoneans a very bad name. State-sanctioned begging could make things even worse.
(C) Politico 19/12/13
