Ose to Ose Ebola Message, But Could We Have Killed Many Birds With One Stone?
By all the accounts we've heard so far, the Ose to Ose Ebola sensitisation went well in many parts of the country. It will take a few more days to produce concrete results for us to determine how much of a blow we gave the Ebola virus. We congratulate all Sierra Leoneans for obeying the rules. It was tough in this dreg- man economy.
However, we've been thinking aloud around this lockdown because somebody suggested to us that we could have killed many birds with just this one lockdown stone. Here we go:
1. The Ebola teams were very impressive in the way they did their job, well, at least some of them. May be we could have used this opportunity to conduct the planned national census over those three days. The country would have saved billions of leones.
2. The corruption and inefficiency at Statistics Sierra Leone with their politically recruited enumerators would have been exposed. They keep asking for vehicles, operational cash and per diem. We could have trained these very effective Ebola teams to do the job. That's an idea eh?
3. The police could well have used the lockdown period to raid criminal hideouts and arrest hardcore criminals who've been on the run for the longest time. They had nowhere to hide during the lockdown.
3. MASADA could have put their own volunteers on the roads to give Freetown a good scrubbing. Pictures of Wilberforce Street that appeared on international media were very disgraceful. People returned to the same dirty streets after three days. Shame.
4. Anyway, one major social development coming out of this Ebola menace is the extent to which families that were on the brink of disintegration have kissed and made up during the lockdown. To take that forward parliament will now pass the FAMILY CONSOLIDATION BILL 2014. Hahahahahahah!
Objects of the bill:
Being a bill to ensure that husbands spend more time with their families and play games with their children at home.
Main Clause - all bars, particularly those mushrooming near churches and mosques will be closed down with immediate effect
DEAD BODY FOR DINNER ON SLBC TV: BUT WHO CARES ABOUT ETHICS
We don't know what next to do about the authorities at the state broadcaster, the SLBC/TV to get them to at least think about media ethics when they do programmes. We don't have a prison yard to lock them up and as long as they are satisfying their political bosses with politically-biased reporting, they can be sure that their contracts would be renewed again, again and again.
How can the SLBC really explain their behaviour last weekend? There was this story about a man apparently committing suicide by hanging himself somewhere in the east of Freetown. The SLBC served that picture to the people at dinner, without any thought about the feelings of the family of the deceased or the distaste to viewers. The real purpose of that we don't know, but we suspect they wanted to tell people their cameras were there.
This attitude is very unbecoming of a state broadcaster that operates in the 21st century. Are we the only people complaining? Or has Orman, together with his people, not heard our protests? But, of course, it's easy to ignore us. The shame that such behaviour brings to them is what we believe will haunt them for a long time to come.
Let's just sound the alarm again: SLBC producers and camera people must read and understand the IMC Code of Practice very well. There are special provisions on how to report on the following categories of people: the sick, the dead, people involved in accidents, physically-challenged and children. We have a lot of examples to show how the SLBC has been insensitive to all of these groups over a long period. This cannot be allowed to continue. If people are not equipped to be producers, then let them stop pretending.
Back To The Streets With Vengeance: Criminals Out For Backlog Pay
Three-day lockdown is over and small-time criminals have returned to work on our streets. During the lockdown, the boys and girls who live on the streets suffered badly. There was no street food, no cars for the boys to help park for cash, no shoppers to steal from and no crazy men looking for women to pick up from the streets for fun. The squeeze was really on for three days but now it's back to work.
The rest of us should be extremely careful with our money and other property on the streets of Freetown this week. Respectable men should avoid Garrison, Charlotte and Wilberforce streets after 7pm because desperation could force the young ladies who do business there to spring surprises.
There is one case that young men never win. When a young lady creates a scene around you at a place like the one we have just mentioned, all onlookers and the police are bound to believe that this was about a secret affair that had gone bad. In fact don't allow the police to move the matter to their station because journalists like us would soon get a tipoff and before you know it, we have a front page story. The price of selling out of police is normally huge...Hahahahaha. Take care on the roads.
Scotland Stays In The UK: How Would Former Colonies Have Voted?
In the end Scotland made the right decision to vote to stay in the United Kingdom as we had predicted. The UK's power and role in the world would have been affected negatively had Scotland left the union. Ok but we've been trying to look into the crystal ball to see what could happen if former British colonies, particularly those in West Africa were given the reverse choice to decide whether they would like to be re-colonised by Britain. A Ghanaian journalist suggested Ghana would gladly offer itself to Britain. We believe all former colonies in Africa would return to the British Crown.
Sierra Leoneans would almost certainly vote "Yes", even if the Sister of Cluny was allowed to resurrect from national irrelevance to conduct that referendum. The number of votes she will have to invalidate to tilt the election in favour of De Pa would be so huge that the referendum would become a farce and people would be on the streets almost immediately after she would have smilingly announced those results. (We remember how she smiled as she read out the last result. We miss you Mother Superior).
In that referendum, there would be absolutely no need to campaign because the issues would be too clear for all to see - a good health care system, good education (not the one in which the minister spends 6 years looking for ghost teachers), maximum security, clean drinking water running in homes, international respectability, swift and decisive attack on corruption and TRUE DEMOCRACY - All Guaranteed under British Rule.
Voting will be brisk and should be over in a few hours.
The few "No" voters will assemble at Marine House to weep over their loss and the rest of the people will go to their homes singing God Save the Queen.
(C) Politico 23/09/14
