SLRA OPEN YOUR EYES TO DILLET STREET – FERGUSSON STREET JUNCTION
The SLRA and their friends at the Road Maintenance Fund should NEVER tell us that they haven’t seen the mess at the junction of Dillet and Fergusson Streets. Maybe we should accept that the big guys in those organizations don’t use that route to and from work so they may not have seen things with their own eyes but we are very sure that people would have called their attention to the danger at that busy junction.
Now, let’s put it here for them to read and then wait for what happens next. Part of the culvert in that place has collapsed and after a few days of cars falling into the ditch, people in the area put a long stick with a piece of cloth and an old car tyre to warn motorists of the danger.
For the past one week or so we have observed that situation hoping that within a few hours or days the SLRA in particular would do something but as we write the danger is still there. This is not only about cars, even pedestrians run the risk of falling into that ditch and sustaining serious injuries. We are living in a country with no history of people taking public utilities to court and getting big money off them for such carelessness so the best we can do now is to appeal to SLRA to remove the danger from that place right now. Please we don’t want to hear anything about the unavailability of funds. Protecting the welfare of the people means we should look for money from any source to do this job.
The SLRA should know that the problem at that junction has lasted more than a decade. They have solved the one at the former traffic lights location at Brookfields but Dillet Street was ignored. We will observe the situation over this weekend and see if we will enter the new week with that dangerous situation still in place. By the way, is that place not part of Mayor Kemokai’s Transform Freetown thing? We are expecting a big NO.
FAULTY ELECTRONIC SYSTEM AT THE TOLL GATES
We don’t know if this is something we should be complaining about with all things considered but we note that sometimes when we drive through the toll gates the system fails to pick up our car registration number. When it picks something up at all it brings us a completely different number.
On a recent trip to and from the countryside the system registered a completely different number for our vehicle at all the three gates. In this circumstance, we refused to pick up our tickets because we cannot carry a ticket bearing the numbers of vehicles belonging to different people.
Maybe there will be a problem with accountability even though we believe the operators of the toll gates are very clever in collecting their cash but there is some security implication for such a faulty reading – criminals can drive from Freetown and cause havoc somewhere in the provinces and drive back to Freetown without being traced at any of those gates because the electronic system will give a faulty reading. So getting a picture of the getaway car in Bo, Kambia or Kono will not be enough because the criminals will still get an alibi to stick in court if it came down to using the evidence of going through the toll gates to put the criminals on the scene of crime.
If the company is going to be collecting so much money on a daily basis, they should be able to operate a good electronic system at all times in the interest of accountability and to help deal with security challenges.
WHEN WILL THE NATIONAL STADIUM RENOVATION BEGIN?
The physical condition of the National Stadium is in very poor shape, extremely poor shape. We’ve been told that a Chinese construction firm has been contracted to renovate the facility once again but one deadline after the other has come and gone. In fact the Sports Minister who has no problem violating the government's COVID-19 restrictions has also gone quiet on the issue. Is this program still on or not? We want only a YES or NO answer from the minister, not that meaningless waffle we heard over his deliberate violation of COVID-19 regulations.
When even CAF was forced to ban our stadium, causing us to play in Guinea, we knew that our situation was below our understanding or BELOW. The place is now a real eyesore. Squatters have moved in. The other day we saw pictures of some people hanging their clothes out to dry near the perimeter fence. The area overlooking the swimming pool is another big mess of overflowing drainage with dirty water in the car park. We will not talk about people who have occupied the hostels, refusing to pay rent. Something is very wrong.
We call on the management of that place and the NSA in fact to close that stadium until the renovation project begins otherwise the contractors may be forced to ask for more money when they reassess the devastation before actual work begins. We know the facility is within the purview of the NSA now but overall political responsibility rests with the Ministry of Sports. In any case the announcement about renovation was made by that ministry so they have to tell the state of play.
ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS CONTINUE ACROSS SALONE
What we are witnessing as we go deep into the rainy season should leave us in no doubt that we are in for some really bad weather conditions not seen in years. We are getting daily reports of storms blowing away roofs in communities in different parts of the country. The met office has told the nation to expect floods in Freetown. We are not exactly used to floods in this city but we know what happens when our drainage system easily collapses after just one hour or so of rain. In times past, houses on the hills were washed away in mudslides; children were sometimes swept down the hills. This is definitely not something to wish for but all the signs indicate that we should be prepared for anything.
There was a study a few years back that identified this land that we love as one country most at risk of being battered by adverse weather conditions as a result of climate change. We may be hearing a lot from our buwa-bisiesh Mayor and her so-called delivery team about flood mitigation plans and this and that but the kind of flooding envisaged this year is something even countries with a lot of experience dealing with such matters can never be prepared for.
Our new disaster management office should be all over the place now preparing us for the inevitable. They should spend a lot of time in the media telling people how to prepare and where to get help. They should talk about coordination among all the units involved in the so-called flood mitigation effort. We know they are a new agency but there is work to do and it’s very urgent.
Sierra Leone is a country where everything is politicized so that even when people are told to move away from disaster zones in their own interest they throw it into the political arena and many shameless politicians are normally there to try to score cheap political points by telling the people they were being moved away for political reasons.
Instead of going into those flood-prone communities to prepare their people, they are waiting for the disaster to occur so that they can turn up and make big political speeches, drop a few bags of rice with TV cameras rolling and present themselves as the most caring people in this country. At least we now understand what those gimmicks are really about and we will help our people see through them.
Copyright © Politico Online (16/07/21)
