VP Sam-Sumana
By Septimus Senessie in Kono
Vice President Samuel Sam Sumana has come under attack by some people in his native district of Kono who openly accused him of “being anti-developmental against his own district”.
The project coordinator of Jericho Road Ministry, Phibian Fengai Abdulai and the head teacher of Koidu School for the Blind, Tamba Mathew Gbessay said they were being supported by some residents of Koidu town, both direct and indirect beneficiaries of a hospital whose construction was said to have been stopped by the Vice President.
The allegations were that the vice president had “directly stopped the construction of a hospital that would provide medical facilities to over 5,000 people free of cost”.
Sounding overwrought and thirsty, Phibean claimed that the VP had accused her of being disrespectful to him by putting up a public structure near to his house.
“The VP also falsely accused me of not consulting with him on the implementation of the project. That is not true,” she said, adding that even before she brought the project to the district from America, the first person she contacted was the VP and he gave her the go-ahead.
Meanwhile, some angry youth said they would take to the streets in protest if the VP did not change his stance, and even threatened to set on fire the VP’s house, which is some 50 metres away from the construction site.
Looking and sounding livid, one of them, Sahr Mondeh of Mbriwo Motto which is one of the intended beneficiary communities, told Politico that they were prepared to face the consequence of their future actions.
“We are not going to allow anybody to drive away such development from our community as they did with MSF [the charity medico] in 2002. We don’t want to see our women and children dying of curable diseases”, he said.
She also alleged that during his last visit the VP sent his senior driver, Kerinton Conteh, and his house steward, one Mr. Francis to warn her to stop the work. She claimed to have been asked by Alex Konoyima, the deputy director of housing in the ministry of lands, to stop work on the site after he received an order from the minister of lands, housing and country planning, Musa Tarawallie.
Phibean said when completed the hospital, which had its presence in five communities in the district and had done surgical operations on over one hundred poor rural people through a partnership with government hospital, would target over 6,000 sick people.
The senior housing officer in Kono, Kai Sumana, confirmed that Phibean had met him over three months ago with her a house plan of one-acre land bearing the signatures of the Kono District Council, Chiefdom Administration of Tankoro chiefdom and the Administration of the Koidu School for the Blind, who were the owners of the land in question.
He said they had stopped the work because she couldn’t produce an “offer letter” from the ministry of lands.
Efforts to reach the Vice President bounced. The minister of state in his however, Harriett Turay declined to comment on the matter saying it was not an official matter.
On Monday heavy violence broke out between some young men, who were making a daily wage from the construction work, and the Koidu metropolitan police who said they were acting on the orders of the Koidu Mayor, Saa Emerson Lamina, because the construction work had not obtained a building permit from the council. One of the policemen was injured on the forehead and the matter is now being investigated by the Tankoro police division.
But Mayor Lamina denied allegations that he was acting on the orders of VP Sam Sumana to stop construction work on the site. He said: “my action was to protect state land for its proper utilisation”, adding that they had merely asked Phibean to produce the building permit and other related documents.
(C) Politico 13/02/14
