HOW ATTRACTIVE IS NGC WITHOUT KKY?
The whole country knew even before the last general and presidential elections that KKY’s mind was made up to quit NGC. Yes, his body remained in the NGC, such that he attended meetings and physically received NGC people at his home but his spirit had returned to the SLPP. In truth, the SLPP worked very hard to bring him back because whether people like it or not, KKY is a strong politician with enormous international clout that could benefit any political party in Sierra Leone.
What is left of the NGC after the formal departure of KKY appears like a group of people living in the past. That past goes only as far back as 2007.
KKY is now running THREE big departments that are important to the success of Principal’s last term at State House. He has managed to bring some of his key people into government. Now those who are looking at things from the outside are angry. They have now turned to the alliance document with SLPP asking for more jobs. Well, that’s the nature of the game. The way things are going now, we can only tell them that they have to keep trying because there are only a few jobs and only the fittest of the fittest SHALL SURVIVE.
KKY took the NGC into alliance with the SLPP in June 2023, against the wishes of many NGC people abroad and some at home including Mr. BOTE GAME who desperately wanted the NGC to go down the RED road. In fact, he experimented with that at two by-elections.
1. We may be wrong and we are prepared to accept that, but we believe that with KKY returning to the SLPP, the alliance document has been torn to shreds and NGC people who were hoping for jobs and other political favors because of that document should join KKY and forget about rebuilding the NGC.
2. The NGC performed badly in June and is on the verge of being wiped out. In fact the only thing the SLPP gained from the alliance was keeping KKY as a person out of the campaign. He is a power campaigner who would have obscured the SLPP’s message on many fronts.
3. In many ways the NGC dug their own grave. They were split down the middle over which of the two big parties to work with and long before KKY decided to have meetings with Principal, Brightest Man had declared his BOTE GAME with Orsamu as his main man.
4. Some NGC people have now entered government while others are warming up on the touch line. It’s time to join up guys. NGC is heading the way of PDP and UNPP – with the greatest respect to those two parties.
MAYOR KEMOKAI CLEAR ALL ABANDONED VEHICLES FROM OUR STREETS
Our FCC Mayor has made a lot of statements about the menace of abandoned vehicles littering our roads in this congested city. Indeed this situation is making life difficult for people wanting to park their cars briefly to buy fast food or just drop something off. There are simply too many rotten cars abandoned by God knows who on our streets. This is bad and it’s not enough for our Mayor to go around telling people about transforming Freetown and all that. She has to make the few roads we have available to people who have paid vehicle licenses and all other charges to use the roads in safety.
Now is the time for the Mayor to meet the police and the SLRSA and possibly the SLRA so they can plan the immediate removal of all such rotten vehicles and it’s not a difficult thing to do. All these agencies can put in the capital needed to do this job and those whose vehicles are towed to an agreed place will pay the cost of that service plus a fine. We simply cannot continue like this.
The Mayor must also consider the vexed question of the unavailability of parking spaces in the Central Business District of her city. We can’t understand why despite all the complaints over the years the FCC is still unable or is REFUSING to take over parking from some rough boys who only manage to squeeze money from people because they block off what little spaces are available early in the morning and only clear them for cash. In some cases people actually pay to stop them from stealing from parked cars.
The FCC is losing millions daily to the street boys. FCC prefers to go all over the place complaining of inadequate support from the central government while ignoring a viable revenue stream on the altar of political correctness.
AND THOSE BEGGARS NEAR THE COTTON TREE
We drive by the Cotton Tree daily and we have observed that the number of beggars near the tree and those spreading up State Avenue leading to State House continues to grow. It’s one of those sights we hate to see particularly in that part of Freetown.
There are many reasons why we have so many of them in that area and in such locations across our major cities. It could well be that economic conditions have forced many people to take such desperate measures to survive or among those people are a hard core who believe begging on the streets is easier than using their strength and talent to put food on their table.
We can recall that when Mayor Kemokai came to office she started a program aimed at getting mostly disabled beggars off the streets and for a time their number was drastically reduced. We can now say it was a false situation because the numbers we see in this area alone tells a very bad story about how our Mayor is running Freetown. We’ve been looking around for information about that nine-day wonder program that cleared our city center of beggars but it would appear as if nobody wants to talk to us about it. In this job, we are used to that kind of thing and we know why officials behave that way.
That cannot stop us making the following points anyway:
1. We just can’t have so many Sierra Leoneans coming to that place daily to beg. It’s a shame. We have to find a way to reduce that number by some carefully designed social intervention as a first step. And the FCC should lead this effort again but they should first tell the people of this country what happened to their earlier effort.
2. We have to be honest some of those people will still go to the Cotton Tree daily even if they were given accommodation at Hill Station with hot meals and small pocket money. We should be firm with that small number and make it legally impossible for them to continue begging on the streets.
3. We urge Mayor Kemokai to please remember to send people to that Cotton Tree area daily to clean after our beggar compatriots. Many parts of this city are in a mess but let’s keep the Cotton Tree general area very CLEAN. Thank You Mayor Kemokai.
WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON AT MIATTA CONFERENCE CENTER?
For the better part of THREE years Miatta Conference Center has been closed to the public. From the outside we can see that something that looks like renovation work is taking place but we don’t know the extent of the work and why it’s taken so long to renovate a place that wasn’t that bad at the time it was closed to the public after all.
In fact we went to the place the other day and looked around but we couldn’t see even the normal notice board that details the scope of work, the contractor and the date on which the job should be completed. Why is that a secret?
It’s very important for such information to be boldly displayed for even the blind to see. Why is that done for many other projects but not this one? Miatta Conference Center is important to ordinary Sierra Leoneans organizing events for a few hundred people. Not everybody can afford the cost for Bintumani International Conference Center.
Anyway, when Miatta Conference Center finally opens to the people want those running the place to do the following:
1. Make sure water flows in the toilets constantly
2. Make it impossible for people to easily gatecrash seminars and conferences for breakfast and lunch. They are normally well dressed and they somehow manage to get accreditation badges and conference papers.
3. Make sure the public address system works well. We don’t want any continuation of the practice of people striking microphones with their fingers to check whether it’s live and please don’t depend on EDSA.
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