PROFESSOR FROM GREELEY, COLORADO SENT PACKING
The word from official sources is that our Professor from Colorado is on leave till August this year. At that time his tenure would also come to an end and he would be up for renewal. What official sources have refused to put their name to is the fact that even if Principal is returned in June, he wouldn’t be bringing the Professor back to the Sam Bangura building. So as far as we know, this is the end of Professor’s time in charge of our central bank. Good bye Professor. Are you already on the plane to Colorado sir? We ask because most people who return to this country to pick up jobs leave immediately they are sacked.
We are not experts in how central banks are managed so we will not attempt to evaluate his performance in that office. What we want to do now, is say a word or two on how he communicated with the public. Let’s just say from the outset, he realized the importance of communication and signaled that from his first day in office. The central bank has a communication office that was looking like Manchester United under Ralph Rangnick - desperately needing an Eric Ten Hag to make any impact. Our professor made an appointment in that department instantly.
We have mentioned this because we really couldn’t understand why our Professor performed so badly every time he faced the public – check out his appearances on radio or in parliament. Nothing wrong with him making a few appearances but for him to have been going all over the place and performing the way he did was a colossal failure of the communications wing of the BSL. We will touch this a bit more in subsequent editions.
Every public appearance by our Professor presented a lot of RED MEAT for the opposition who easily spun things to confuse a gullible public. BSL would then spend money and time cleaning up. Meanwhile the main communication people wouldn’t even pick up their calls. We will be back on this matter.
CAF STRIKES THOMAS DADDY BRIMA, SLFA HOUSE ON FIRE
There’s uneasiness at the SLFA secretariat. The Confederation of African Football CAF has threatened strong measures against the SLFA, essentially for failing to act like all professional organizations. We don’t want to re-go over all what is contained in the CAF document that was leaked on social media but it would suffice to say that what Thomas Daddy Brima is being told is that he needs to take control of his secretariat and inject some professionalism in how they operate.
It therefore means they would fight match-fixing and promptly and properly investigate all such allegations involving players, match officials and administrators. And above all, when female footballers complain of sexual harassment, Thomas Daddy Brima’s secretariat would investigate and take necessary action according to FIFA standards. That’s what CAF is talking about. CAF hates the idea that such things are being swept under the carpet.
So while the SLFA boss is out there in Kigali, rubberstamping Gianni Infantino’s appointment as FIFA boss his house back home is on fire. His allies in the so-called football family are busy attacking the mercurial and increasingly temperamental General Secretary of undermining Brima and possibly using charms on him. This is now looking like a scene out of a box office movie in Hollywood.
We saw this coming a when Brima became president. He is a good man and he doesn’t need to be the SLFA president to live a good life. However, anti-personnel land mines were planted underneath the road that that took him to that office. That job was completed weeks before he was declared winner in the city of Makeni.
Between now and the next SLFA elective congress those mines would continue to explode. The first one has just gone off and we will soon start counting the causalities. Brima will be maimed by the time the final one explodes. Brother TDB, please don’t allow us to say WE TOLD YOU SO.
WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE BEGGING ALL OVER THE PLACE?
In answer to this question please don’t tell us about hard times. We know times are hard all over the world such that those countries and institutions that supported initiatives aimed at helping the poor in our countries have pulled back to concentrate on their own at home. We understand that. But is that the reason why so many of our people including able bodied men and women are now on the streets daily looking for handouts?
The point is that we are not talking about some of the disabled people who hang around at the Cotton Tree and near traffic intersections. We are talking about children in school uniform complaining of hunger on their way to and from school, teenage boys and girls always asking for transport money and totally drunk adolescents, in fact high on KUSH begging for food along the main streets. What’s going on?
1. This idea that just because people are living with a disability they should be begging for their survival on the streets is WRONG. There are many people in such condition in this country who are bread winners running respectable homes. We call on charities working with these people to help them understand that they are downgrading their humanity by begging on the streets.
2. It is always easy to throw all of this back at the government and we understand that but there are many Sierra Leoneans living with disability who have pulled themselves away from such degrading existence by their will power and belief in themselves with very little government help. Why are the others different?
3. Let us properly coordinate charitable giving to these people so that like SICK PIKIN is doing, the benefits would flow seamlessly to the needy. We don’t know if this would end the street activity any time soon because some have turned street begging into a survival game but at least we may be sure our monies are going into the right places. Those who take their chances on the streets should get no joy.
4. As for those drug addicts begging to feed their habits, only people with more money than sense would give them even a PENNY. They can go to HELL.
END THE PLASTIC BOTTLE MENACE ON OUR STREETS
We have called attention to this issue in this column many times. It’s one of those issues about which the authorities decided they will completely ignore us. We have to return to it now to remind them that we will not allow them to ignore us and also because by doing nothing about it, things have gone from bad to worst.
Let’s make it clear that we are not against any local company selling soft drinks to our people. We want Sierra Leoneans and their locally produced goods to dominate the market but what we have noticed from the local soft drinks companies is that their plastic containers are polluting our environment and the authorities who cleared them to operate in this country have not told them to stop making huge profits while polluting our environment and in a way contributing to the factors that cause flooding particularly in Freetown.
Here’s what we saw at St. John two days ago. SLRA workers cleared the drainage for waste water to flow freely but two days later the rubbish drawn out of the gutter is still on the side of the street. It’s clear from this picture that the plastic bottles we are talking about are all over the place. We want action now.
1. Cancel the license granted to these soft drink producers until we are convinced that they have put in a place a robust system of cleaning after themselves. We should also put in place a system by which we monitor that to make sure they don’t quickly return to their old ways after one week.
2. Let’s take them to court and get some big money from them for they damage they’ve caused so far or to simply recover the money we’ve spent clearing our drainage system blocked by their plastic bottles since they came into operation.
3. As consumers we should consider an initial ONE month boycott of such drinks to force the producers to clean up now and commit to cleaning regularly. This is not an attempt to squeeze local producers out of business it is a sensible move to end pollution.
4. This government NEEDS to now go to parliament with legislation to ban single use plastic from Sierra Leone. Other countries in our neighborhood have done it. We can also do it.
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