By Umaru Fofana
At the Connaught Hospital mortuary I stood with a pout. Six dead bodies were being brought out. One by one the red mud was washed off them. One of them had an Arsenal t-shirt on. He can never again watch the English Premier League. A pastime here especially for otherwise forlorn unemployed youth who find badly-needed relief in football. The Sierra Leone society seems to have failed to bring them that. Later that day at the morgue, all six hefty-looking young men would be wrapped and returned inside. And their families would step forward to identify them. And the president and his vice and many other dignitaries would, some three days later, attend their mass funeral ceremony. Early, untimely and avoidable deaths! Many more are feared dead trapped beneath the rubble. No one seems keen anymore to dig out amid the grumble. The only earth-moving equipment that later joined in the recovery mission was volunteered by a private construction company. The recovery effort seems to have been abandoned. Perhaps cognisant of the alarming fatalities and the attendant reverberations they may cause. A total mockery of the attention said to be being paid to our infrastructure and our youth. “I will die for the youth” comes to mind. The King Jimmy Bridge collapse has exposed more than just its rickety nature. It has brought out the sole of our infrastructure, or the lack of it, and our institutions or their lack of preparedness. Otherwise those people would still be alive today. Some of the six dead young men looked heavily built even in death. Just a few hours earlier they were hearty and hail. Now they are dead. They died because they had no home. So they had to sleep under the colonial King Jimmy Bridge. Who does not know that people live under bridges in Freetown – from Aberdeen Bridge to the Congo Cross Bridge and Wallace Johnson Bridge there are squatters everywhere. They do not want to be there. Society has forced them to be there. And the authorities do not seem to care. Often we are quick to judge those people. But where can they go and sleep after a day’s hard job made even harder for them because eking out a living is especially tough for them. One of them was brought out from the rubble wrapped in a blanket. He had been sleeping. Under the bridge. Willy-nilly. That was his home. Job for them is hard to come by. The exorbitant house rent charged here mostly in US dollars they could not afford. Rent the authorities do not give a hoot about. Homelessness meant these Sierra Leoneans had to die the way they did. Show me the housing policy. And where are the emergency services? Rescue efforts turned to recovery efforts in no time after the bridge had collapsed. All because there were no emergency services. The City Council does not have it. The hospitals lack it. The so-called Disaster Management Department of the Office for National Security can only dream of having anything to manage a disaster. Let alone prevent it. It has now emerged that the bridge collapsed shortly after 9:00 PM on Thursday. That was when the disaster management unit of ONS started making telephone calls for equipment. It never did come forth. The youth in the area had to resort to their bare hands and managed to save three people. Who knows how many lives could have been saved if Freetown had a functional emergency services. All by themselves the youth also recovered three dead bodies. Even for those bodies there was no ambulance to convey them to the mortuary which is less than 300 metres away. They had to carry them themselves. In this central and easy-to-access part of Freetown, it took several hours (the following morning actually) for anyone to come to their aide. Entered the soldiers. The local Red Cross had joined in a bit earlier. Such is how centralised governance in Sierra Leone has become that one wonders whether any minister or government official has any initiative to do anything without being led by President Ernest Bai Koroma. Or first hero-worshipping him. The Freetown City Council finds itself in that quagmire. Gross incompetence and lack of initiative and candour and valour. The Mayor seems completely bereft of any idea or drive to govern this historic city. Everything and anything is wrapped in the over-trumpeted jive and vibe of “in line with the president’s Agenda for Prosperity”. Oh Please! Does the city council not know that there are people sleeping under bridges in this town! Does the ministry of lands not know that people build anywhere and everywhere and they have licences to do so! Does the ministry of social welfare not know that landlords and landladies have become demigods and so charge rents at will! Do all these put together not account for the fact that year-in year-out our compatriots die in reckless abandon and all our leaders do is to visit the scenes and families and make a political capital out of it! Every rainy season we brood over this. When the rains disappear they disappear with promises by the authorities to take action. Everybody who had used the King Jimmy Bridge in recent months and cared to pay any attention can testify that the bridge had had cracks for ages. And it is just 100 metres from the Central Police station. Police officers who should safeguard life and property. It is less than 1,000 metres from the headquarters of the Freetown City Council who would always go there to collect market dues. They did not care! Guma Valley Water Company made a bad situation even worse. They dug the rickety and flaky bridge and planted their pipes which supply water to only God knows where. Taps in homes are still dry anyway. That further weakened the bridge. It plummeted. It killed innocent people whose only crime was that they were poor and homeless. Not only are these under-the-bridge settlements unsafe for those who live there, they also serve as a breeding ground for criminals. I understand that one of those killed had been being hunted by police for years. Police in the central district command are just a whisker away. If they were political opponents, the police would have sought them. That is what they have been good at, government-in, government-out. Such is the catch 2 situation for residents of Freetown that when the rains are not here, water in their homes is not guaranteed. And when the skies open up disaster strikes. No institutions or individuals are held to account for the several lives that are always lost at this time of year. From Manfred Lane and Mountain Cut in the east, to New England and elsewhere in the west, mudslides, boulders and crumbling bridges crush poor Sierra Leoneans to death. Politicians visit. They make promises to take action. When the rains disappear the promises disappear with them. Whatever is done now will be like closing the staple after the horse has bolted. Six men abandoned while alive. Forced to end that life. Needlessly! Avoidably! “Don’t cry oh sufferers!” says my colleague, Sayoh Kamara. How appropriate! You can no longer cry. Rest in peace. (C) Politico 13/08/13
