LIGHTING UP TOWNS AGAIN AFTER DECADES
The latest supplementary budget presented before the house of parliament by Finance Minister JJ Saffa somehow highlighted very interesting projects that this government wants to fund in the coming months. What has certainly attracted great interest for people in seven districts is the government’s plan to bring electricity to the towns of Kabala, Kambia, Kailahun, Moyamba, Pujehun, Bonthe and Mattru, places where older folks could barely recall dim memories of bulbs lighting up in their homes. For some places like Moyamba it’s been almost two generations now that the town which is closest to the capital has gone without electricity. You may wonder why on earth our people should be denied of such a basic service like electricity.
Kambia is the first big town for anyone coming into Sierra Leone from Guinea but the place has not seen light for decades. Some 17 million dollars is going into this project and that’s a huge sum of money indeed. People would want to see the implementation process if the exercise is efficiently carried out by competent and committed individuals. People don’t want to face a situation where this much needed electrification of their towns could turn out as just a flash in the pan.
We’ve seen many projects in this country go that way before and that’s why we are demanding a thorough handling of this latest push by principal’s administration. For instance the much trumpeted road construction project for Moyamba town was a complete mess. Apart from the few asphalt applications along parts of the main street and a few others, the whole project collapsed and the company executives fled town, leaving behind unpaid and understandably irate workers.
It took the negotiating skills of then deputy works minister Melrose Kargbo to really calm the workers and also property owners who also complained of lack of compensation for losing their assets to the disastrous road project. Another project for Moyamba residents that was supposed to bring running water into their homes collapsed and became an unfulfilled promise.
Imagine the economic benefits power supply will bring to people in those places; Kabala and Kailahun both having promising touristic sites would be able to preserve foods and cold drinks that they would be selling.
Fishing communities in the districts of Pujehum and Bonthe would be able to sell frozen fish and other sea products in these towns. We’ve always been saying Freetown is not Sierra Leone and it’s high time that rhetoric is matched with realistic practicalities.
The people can’t just wait for the light!
MENTALLY-CHALLENGED PEOPLE ON OUR STREETS – WHO CARES?
We are in sympathy with families that have to go through the pain of seeing their loved ones suffer serious mental health problems. No one would want that to happen to a relative or friend but mental health issues are part of man’s life since creation. Conventionally acceptable normal behavior and appearances are replaced by very unpleasant traits as the disease eats up a sufferer. Many such people could be seen in streets in our major cities and towns.
Their often pathetic state has attracted sympathetic attention and revulsion that nothing is being done to get them off the streets and house them at the Kissy Psychiatric hospital, the only separate facility in the country that is providing care for mental patients in the country. Many years ago, specially trained people would be seen along the main streets of Freetown taking roaming mentally-challenged Sierra Leoneans to the Kissy Mental Home as the place was called then. By so doing, the threat they posed to public safety and their often embarrassing appearances are removed. But now no one seems to care.
Last week along Congo Cross and close to an area where three schools are located, a Mentally-challenged woman, completely naked could be seen hunched over a garbage bin, a very embarrassing sight indeed. Three years ago, a mentally-challenged man called soldier went into a house around Berwick Street and stabbed a woman to death. The fellow was found hours later sleeping soundly at his brother’s house.
Principal recently formally opened the impressive looking Kissy Psychiatry hospital but what is the relevance having such a hospital when majority of those who should be having treatment there are all over the place.
We need to employ people that can go out and bring these people to the magnificent facility where they can give proper care. No one would like to see their relative suffering like that in the full glare of the public.
PARENTS TURN OUT AGAIN IN LARGE NUMBERS FOR NPSE
A New Direction government is in place but the old habit of parents or relatives accompanying children to the National Primary School Exam which determines entry into secondary school has not stopped.
Like many Sierra Leoneans, we have no problem with people dropping their children off for the exam and picking them up later in the day.
What we have a problem with is when the parents – mostly mothers decide to stay outside the examination center with all kinds of food and drinks specially prepared to the day as if they were attending a carnival. Many people have complained about this many times but we are living in a country where people think they can do anything they like without consequences. We think this attitude must stop because of the following reasons:
1. With hundreds standing outside the examination center, chatting and playing music, the nervous little kids will become even more nervous, knowing that their parents are just outside watching them. At the very least they will be distracted.
2. We don’t have concrete evidence but we understand that some parents go under this cover to interfere with the exam by making contact with supervisors during the lunch break. Those supervisors then return to the hall with a list of names to pay special attention to. We will just leave it at that for now until our investigators return from the field.
3. We have to puncture this hypocrisy. In normal times some children go to school unaccompanied and hungry so why this picnic atmosphere just because it’s NPSE day? This is looking more like parents showing off than children being taken care of.
SLRA YOUR SLABS ARE FALLING AWAY IN MANY AREAS IN FREETOWN
Good Morning SLRA. We are kindly asking you to send your people out to see what is happening to the slabs linking some heavily used roads in Freetown. If you already have workers doing that kind of work please tell then to be more careful in their observation because we are seeing things that they have not seen for many weeks. Of course there is always this possibility that they have indeed reported what we are talking about but you either don’t have the money to deal with the problems or you have other priorities.
We will just mention two areas for now: look at the situation at the junction of Charles Street and Dundas Street. We have seen vehicles falling into that little ditch created by the falling away of the slabs linking those two streets. Take Dundas Street to Sanders Street. Just one slab fell off months ago and as busy as that area is, the SLRA has not taken notice of the danger.
What people in the area have done over the last two months or so is to place rotten car tyres over the hole to warn drivers of the danger. Within a few days somebody will replace the tyres with a long stick and so on.
What does it really take to re-set those slabs to free up the road and secure lives? We don’t even want to start talking about roads in the city that have deteriorated so badly during the rains that we can boldly say you have no choice but to fix them before Christmas. We are always told that you don’t do serious road maintenance during the rains so we are waiting for the October.
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