WHY ARE OUR LAW MAKERS DARING THE GOOD PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY?
It took the Great Parliament of the Republic about 48 hours to respond to a document on social media suggesting they were planning to significantly improve their live and circumstances in unbelievable ways given what the world is going through at the moment – still facing a pandemic and destructive and brutal war between Russia and Ukraine and given what Sierra Leone is going through including rising price of fuel and other commodity prices. At this moment also, teachers are threatening to shut the education system down if their demands for more money and improved conditions are not met in the coming weeks.
Parliament faced universal condemnation from the good people of Sierra Leone for being insensitive to the plight of the average Sierra Leoneans who stood in long queues to vote them in. The Clerk of the House then issued a statement saying that they had no idea and therefore “dissociate” themselves from the bill we all read on social media. As usual they didn’t want to quietly return to Tower Hill and lick their wounds. Their press release said this:
Eventhough it is the right of individual members of parliament to prepare and pilot private member’s bills as provided for in Standing Orders 61, Parliament wishes the general public to note that it has nothing to do with the above-mentioned bill.
The fact is that the good people of Sierra Leone have no problem with individual MPs bringing bills to parliament. Isn’t that why they were sent to the place with our votes? But given the timing of this bill, why didn’t they do something for all the workers of Sierra Leone? Why haven’t they brought bills to parliament dealing with the environmental c6/22)hallenges facing the country, about criminal activities like land grabbing, drugs and people trafficking? Aren’t these real challenges facing this country? This parliament shouldn’t get us started.
To advance their point that they knew nothing about what suddenly appeared on social media, they pushed the following lines in their statement
The law provides for a private member’s bill to be recognized by the house, it must fulfill certain conditions including gazetting the document and formally serving the office of the clerk. As at the time of this press release, the bill in question has not met the said conditions and hence “not before parliament”.
We thank them very much for this but we don’t want them to bother us with the position of the rules on such matters. As far as we know this was an unnecessarily elaborate attempt to test the waters over this bill. Now they know what we think. We warn them to tell some of their members who were in many social media platforms vigorously defending what THEY KNEW NOTHING ABOUT, to stop fighting and return home. Parliament is defeated in this battle. The door remains open for them to return with another so-called private member’s bill. We are waiting.
THE QUEUES ARE BACK AS THE WORLD FUEL PRICES RISE
Even if by some magic the guns fall silent in the war between Russia and Ukraine today, the consequences of this war would be felt by the rest of the world for a long time to come. The head of the African Union has just returned to his country from a visit to Moscow to ask Vladimir Putin to open the way for food normally supplied to the rest of the world, particularly African countries by the warring sides to resume.
This last minute diplomacy by Macky Sall of Senegal is looking very much like what leaders from German, France, Austria and other countries did in the last hours before Russian leaders crossed the border to begin a war they call “Special Military Operation”. We have zero hope in anything positive happening. Food shortages would continue and the price of fuel would also continue to rise.
It would appear to us that all our governments in Africa in particular can do is to continue massaging the system to sustain what should look like a normal life. We are doing well with our staple food in terms of its availability in the market but not with fuel. It will be good for the government to put their hand up and tell the people that we live in a global community and we cannot continue to artificially hold down the price of fuel. We cannot also continuously pump what little FOREX we have into just one sector. We have other things to do. Let the forces of demand and supply kick in now.
PUBLIC UTILITY COMPANIES COMPLAIN AB NON PAYMENT OF BILLS
Please tell EDSA and Guma Valley to stop complaining and do what their counterparts in other African countries are doing. We will not say anything about Europe or North America. How can these bodies go all over the place complaining about customers not paying bills when they know what to do in those circumstances? What do they expect ordinary people like us to do for them? The more we read these complaints in the press, the more we lose our patience with these two guys.
1. EDSA and Guma Valley know very well that the biggest culprits in this non-payment of bills thing are MDAs – Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies. We know that those budgets approved by parliament cover payments for these services. Why can’t these guys simply apply the measures necessary and collect their money?
2. Big companies are also not paying EDSA and Guma Valley. In fact they are masters in the game of illegal connections to steal water and electricity. They can’t function without these supplies so shut down the service. They will rush to your offices to pay.
3. We know about those criminal illegal connections in water and electricity supply by ordinary people but as far as EDSA is concerned most ordinary people use pre-paid meters so there’s no chance of owing EDSA a penny.
4. Both companies MUST also address the CORRUPT practices of their field staff. These are the people who do illegal connections resulting in EDSA and Guma Valley being deprived of billions of Leones while they collect pittance in dark corners.
People have been complaining about the criminal activities of some of these EDSA and Guma Valley staff for years but we are now beginning to believe that the tentacles of that syndicate stretches into many important areas in the two organizations. Otherwise why are they still operating
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