By Umaru Fofana
All of Sierra Leone’s roads put together amount to 11,300 kilometres. Most of that is in a state of utter and complete disrepair. The 3Ks – Kono, Kailahun and Koinadugu districts – are incontrovertibly the worst affected. Kono and Kailahun probably stand out for all the wrong reasons because not only are the roads within the districts terrible, but also those leading to their headquarters are largely impassable.
Whoever advised President Ernest Bai Koroma that the solution to the poor road network in the country was the setting-up of the Road Maintenance Fund did a disservice to this nation. But I will come to that momentarily. But first, according to officials of the Sierra Leone Roads Authority, in addition to fixing the existing roads – motorable or not – an additional 600 - 1,000 kilometres of new roads are needed to link more parts of the country together. Admittedly, I am a big fan of the road infrastructure initiative of President Koroma. I cannot in my adult life recall any attempt at addressing this issue this massively. Unfortunately, however, corruption seems to be bringing the whole thing down to its knees and my admiration is fast dissipating.
The introduction of the provincial and district headquarter town road repairs project was very laudable. I cannot help but ask myself what would have happened to our country’s roads had every government before now embarked on a similar project. I hear it was an initiative of the former Tejan Kabbah administration, which was said to have been stalled so that the would-be President Solomon Berewa would have it under his belt if he had been elected. Whether or not that is true it still does not change the fact that it got off the ground under the Koroma presidency and the funds were raised under him. If not for anything the relatively massive expansion of road works throughout the country was enough to make one sit up and appreciate the fact that the Koroma administration meant business in this regard. The downside though is that of all the roads built in the last five years the only ones that are really worthy of writing home about are mostly those funded by foreign donors who awarded their own contracts and supervised construction work.
Credit to the government, the European Union factored into the administration’s priority areas and funded the Rogbere-Kambia highway. The African Development Bank intervened in the Kenema-Pendembu highway which is at an advance stage now. Since these are donor funds I tend not to give credit to the Sierra Leone government for them. The donors would have done them regardless of who was president of Sierra Leone. My real admiration for the Koroma administration in this regard is their intervention in the district and provincial headquarter towns projects which are funded with domestic revenue. But ironically this is fast turning into a damp squib.
The entire government-funded road project is now an utter mess, excepting Wilkinson Road. Apart from Makeni, they have made life more inconvenient for residents of district and provincial headquarter towns which were hitherto not well paved but certainly not as dugout as they are at present. If you are a resident of Freetown pause from reading this article for a moment and try to think of a street that is spared Cauldron Holes. I call them so because they are so wide and deep that a pot is too small to refer to them as potholes. I can only think of Battery Street and Bolling Street at Kingtom.
But why are the roads this awful? A Kenyan friend of mine told me something interesting during my most recent visit to the east African country. Impressed by the massive construction of brand new roads in Nairobi by Japanese contractors he urged me not to be too excited. He said the average Kenyan would want all the roads to be given to the Chinese to do because they are deemed much faster. He certainly preferred the Japanese because he thought they were doing neater, higher quality and more durable roads. Contracts worth billions of US dollars were being awarded by the Kenyan government. And the friend was quick to say that the Japanese were more transparent with their contracts and that some Kenyan government officials, for some commercial interests, had peddled the impression that the Chinese were preferable hence the thinking that that was the reality.
When I told him that my government back home was also doing a heck of a good job with the roads, the friend – who had actually served as a cabinet minister in Kenya – quipped and said thus: “The reason for the newfound road works on the continent among other things is that it is the quickest way for our leaders to steal cash – raw cash”. I was not sure what he meant. Kickbacks and backhanders in road construction are huge and colossal. Reconstruct 100 kilometres at US$ 800,000 per kilo and ask for a receipt for US$ 1.2 million. On just one kilometre someone – probably together with some people – in government has saved US$ 500,000. Do the multiplication and you realise how much is saved or stolen.
This is made worse by the fact that the contractors are under tremendous pressure to give kickbacks or commissions. The consequences of not honouring the bribe call or kickback, or even speaking about it publicly, can be easily guessed. So if you have been wondering why the roads in Sierra Leone are as bad as they are, you need wonder no further. One contractor – who for obvious reasons does not wish to be named – told me that there is so much pressure of them for bribes and “cuts” that they would be out of business if they refused to give in. He said the percentage being requested was so huge that they were forced to reduce the amount of material they would otherwise need to be able to do a very good job. The result: a shoddy job and short-lived roads.
During a recent visit to Kenema in the east, I found it unbelievable that the town’s roads had decayed so much. I even wondered whether the municipality had a mayor or minister any leaders of any sort. The road to Kono is disgracefully terrible and even nonexistent. The road in the district headquarter town of Koidu is scandalous. Dugout like the mining pits the district is famous or infamous for.
Back to Freetown where it seems the roads are repaired to last for only a few months. Shoddy, ruddy and muddy just a few weeks after they are patched costing hundreds of millions of leones. Like the NPRC junta who bought a generator that did not work yet would not return it, or NASSIT who did the same with those rip-offs called ferries, the road contractors are not scolded because some in authority apparently took kickbacks. If they scold the contractors they expose them by explaining why the roads are the way they are. So no one asks any questions. And the roads continue to decay. And the same contractors keep being awarded the contracts.
To the setting-up of the Road Maintenance Fund, this was an unnecessary creation to bring about more bureaucracy and create unnecessary jobs for people with funds charged on every litre of fuel bought for the maintenance of our roads. What the roads authority needed was tough new systems within not a new creation. So are you still wondering why donor-funded roads are well constructed while government-funded ones are an apocalypse? The answer lies in politics and corruption as opposed to decency and accountability. It would seem that even decentralisation has not helped. The road user fee funds that are sent to councils are also being corrupted down there, sometimes at the say-so of those at the central government level. So what roads are we talking about? Those lost to corrupt government officials or those reconstructed by donors?
Politico 03/08/13
