A LOVE LETTER TO KOTOR WURIE
Dear Kottor WURIE
We know you are a busy man these days because of your integral role in the fight against COVID19. We see you on TV sometimes and feel a little sorry for you but you had the option to tell Principal that after TEN YEARS running our Education Ministry under Pa Kabbah it was time to rest from frontline politics. Here you are once again in charge of our Ministry of Health. We don’t know how long you will hold that job but we would not be surprised if you did another TEN YEARS.
This morning, however, we want to call your attention to serious matters in our health facilities that are totally unrelated to COVID. We want you to pay a little attention to this because with the way things are going now, we will not be surprised to wake up one morning and witness a massive demonstration against the quality of care in our hospitals. Some of the demonstrators might just be dead bodies because of the condition they also suffer in some mortuaries. Here are a few issues in that direction:
1. Is it the business of people who spend the night with their patients to attend to their needs throughout the night while your nurses sleep? In fact, should people go to Connaught for example to spend the day and night with their sick relatives just so to be sure they are being taken care of?
2. How about the fact that relatives have to buy something as basic as gloves for some constantly grumbling nurses to attend to their relatives? Are things that bad sir? Many nurses are well trained and very professional but when we stumble on those we met the other day, it is our business to speak out.
3. We are not happy at all about the sanitation at Connaught. Again, we have to say that keeping a place like that clean all the time is a huge task and we commend those who are doing their best right now, but we should never get to a point where people would go in with one disease and return home with a much more serious one. We accompanied a patient for X-ray recently. We were shocked at the unsanitary condition of the area.
4. What’s the difference between patients who buy prescribed drugs from the hospital and those who buy them outside the hospital? We mean in terms of how the nurses relate with them for the rest of their stay in the health facility. Please investigate that sir.
5. We just want to warn you and ask the simple question: what are you doing about corruption and the PIN CODE allocation thing? Please let us know if you ever decide to do something about the situation we have just described.
HARD TIMES FOR THE DEAD IN MAKENI CITY
We just told you that some of those taking part in protests against the ministry of health would be dead people. And here is why:
This is not a good time to die in King Messi’s home city. Well, we don’t know if there is ever a good time to die but die we must because that’s just the way it is. The problem is that preserving a corpse in a mortuary in Makeni will be impossible before long, given what is happening now at the mortuary. The refrigerators are down and have been so for enough time to raise concern in the country. Just one of them is working at the moment and it’s supposed to serve the whole of the north of Sierra Leone. Can you imagine!
So two things are definitely happening out there right now, firstly, when a relative dies you rush to the cemetery and send them on their way. Secondly if you intend to do one of those elaborate ceremonies or a delayed funeral, you must bring the body to Freetown to be preserved. That is an expensive undertaking but Makeni City has no such facility.
This is the time for private individuals to go there and set up shop because King Messi totally failed to address that need like he did for electricity. May be like many other people we know, he doesn’t like talking or thinking about death. Sorry sir, it will surely come to all. Here’s a big business idea for local people to invest in. And of course Kothor Wurie and his ministry of health people must intervene.
CHIEF JUSTICE INTERFERES WITH A JURY? REALLY?
Are we seriously suggesting that Chief Justice Brother Baba went into the jury room to try and influence their decision in the trial of Alfredo? OK let’s say Brother Baba is indeed that kind of person, when would be the best time to do such a thing? In the middle of the trial or at the very end when the jury leave the courtroom to consider their verdict?
Since Brother Baba came to office he has made some good strides. We all know that kind of job is very difficult because there are people in there who benefitted from the chaos in the system before Brother Baba took over. The main court building and the whole compound look very clean these days with the unnecessary crowd gone. We are sure there’s a lot more to do out there but we are impressed.
Maybe it was a good thing Brother Baba’s office responded to a report that appeared to accuse him of meddling with jurors although we believe sometimes even a report or gossip that only two people saw gains prominence the moment somebody in Brother Baba’s position attempts to respond to it.
We are very impressed with the pace at which the trail is going now especially after the initial delays and that mess at the prison yard. However, we are completely fed up with the daily disruption in traffic in that central part of the city when the trial is on. Why not move the whole thing to the Special Court facilities? We urge Brother Baba to consider that.
KING JIMMY BRIDGE IS STILL LEAKING SEWERAGE?
We have to admit that we are tired of writing about the major health risk that King Jimmy Bridge continues to be. For close to ONE YEAR now, if not more, we’ve been constantly calling on Mayor of the Sun to do something about the raw sewerage flowing from the middle of that bridge further polluting the already foul air coming from the open market and huge drainage close by. When our Mayor of the Sun finally decided to act, she did her usual stuff – she went on social media and told the world that the raw sewerage flowing on that vital bridge in the middle of our city would soon be a thing of the past.
On our side, we went back to our newsroom and celebrated the power of journalism that had forced that statement. Our point was that because we persisted in putting the case for the people to a mayor who is more concerned about looking for every opportunity to pick a social media war with the central government and cast herself as the persecuted opposition one, we managed to get her to do her real job at last. We also took notice of the social media posts and congratulated her. Now a few months on we are back where we started more than a year ago.
Madam Mayor of the Sun, your Engineers have failed. King Jimmy Bridge is the same. We will not accept the kind of job done there and if you have paid them big money and have received a certificate of completion from them, please return that certificate and urge them to either fix the problem once and for all or return our money.
Madam Mayor of the Sun, we know of your ambition to lead your party in 2023 – nothing wrong with that. From being asked to come down here by the Queen of England to fight Ebola, to implementing a programme called King Messi’s Post-Ebola Priorities from State House, then to that interesting way you were SELECTED as candidate for Mayor of Freetown, we know. So to lead the Red House and ultimately President of Sierra Leone? That will be interesting to see – Or Samu and Sam Sidikie! All we can do at this stage is to serve notice that we will be at the Red House convention with large number of Freetown residents carrying photos of the mess that is King Jimmy Bridge.
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