WE WANT A MINISTRY FOR LAW AND ORDER NOW
As per our mandate, we write on behalf of the decent and hardworking people of Sierra Leone and we feel compelled to repeat our call for Principal to hurriedly create a MINISTRY for LAW and ORDER. Whether he does that as part of a wider reshuffle of government or not is not our primary concern. The time is now for Principal to make a big statement about his abiding commitment to end lawlessness in this country. With that ministry created, the criminal in this country will know that the game has changed.
Principal, you must have been hearing a lot about acts of lawlessness and rising crime. A university lecturer has just been murdered in his home. Soon people will begin to blame you for failing to take action when criminals are flagrantly violating our civil liberties. Criminals entered an exclusive area like a university campus and murdered a senior lecturer, surely that not a joke anymore.
It may surprise you to know that there are parts of Freetown now that gangs have taken over. They are NO GO areas at certain points of the day. Principal, you cannot allow that to happen on you watch. Here’s our idea of what this ministry will look like.
1. First of all re-structure what we now call MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS. Create a department to handle immigration, NCRA and that drug agency with a Director General in charge. The new LAW and ORDER ministry will take the police and other security units and concentrate on them.
2. The new ministry will be very well funded to recruit the best people and train them well, so well that we will have very little or no complaints about police tactics against peaceful Sierra Leoneans.
3. The day the new minister takes office there will be a meeting in the criminal underworld. At the end of that meeting some of those criminals in attendance will resign and become normal people again.
4. The new ministry will build another a MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON, not that holiday camp called Pademba road. We will bang criminals up there for long periods and make our streets safe again.
IG SOVULA GOES QUIET ON THE WATERLOO SCRAPYARD?
The police have gone completely quiet but we are waiting to see what they will tell us about that obviously criminal scrapyard in Waterloo where stolen vehicles are easily shredded to pieces and sold on the streets of Freetown in bits. In recent times there have been numerous reports of cars stolen across Freetown in particular in circumstances too difficult to believe. For example, a man parked his Toyota RAV 4 vehicle along Campbell Street, approaching St. John; he went into one of the shops to buy something. He returned about TEN MINUTES later to find the empty space where he parked his car. He raised an alarm and those around told him said they actually saw a man drive away in that car.
There was also the case of a senior citizen whose car was stolen from her compound in the west of Freetown and after hours of social media outcry the vehicle was stopped deep inside neighboring Guinea. And there was that Catholic Priest who suffered that same fate at FBC. His vehicle has NEVER been found. We have only mentioned a few among many recent cases.
The arrest of that guy at Waterloo gives us a big opportunity to smash this criminal ring once and for all.
However, we should make the following points:
1. We understand the man has been in that business for many years, why did it take so long for the police to lay fingers on him? How many of such people do we have operating in other dark corners in this country?
2. How far will this investigation go? We warn the police not to simply scratch the surface and pull back claiming victory. We are absolutely convinced that the man now in their custody is part of a major criminal ring distressing people in this country. They should be put away for a very long time on BONTHE ISLAND PRISON.
3. We have always commented on the existence of scrapyards and their links to cars being stolen on the streets. We have argued before in this column that not every stolen car is taken across the border and that scrapyards should be registered and regulated to stop them being used like the one at Waterloo.
4. We are calling attention to the place we know as WATERLOO again. Among the ordinary, hardworking and decent Sierra Leoneans living there are many criminals who have retreated to that dark little corner near Freetown. They have killed soldiers, police officers and ordinary people there but it seems the police would only touch the surface and pull back. We have to do something about Waterloo otherwise there will no peace in Freetown.
UPKEEP TRANSFORMED KISSY PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL
Commonly called the Kissy Mental home, the psychiatric hospital in the hilly settlement east of Freetown was established to treat persons with mental health problems. Being a health condition that our society frowns at or hardly discusses, relapsing sufferers and those completely overwhelmed by the illness, face stigmatisation. For many years it carried a horrible reputation and families kept sick relatives away. There were those perennial allegations of ill-treatment of patients including beatings and starvation and coupled with the appalling conditions of the place. Only fearsome mentally ill people that roamed the streets were dumped at the hospital. The place has over the years symbolically come to represent abandonment, neglect and decadence, until this latest impressive transformation.
It came as a great relief to see the hospital rehabilitated, refurbished and modernized. It has also got Teaching Hospital status. Hats off to American Not- For- Profit organization named Partners in Health for putting their resources into the place. Principal drove from state house up to Kissy to get the new look Psychiatric hospital formally opened. Medical students would now be encouraged to take up psychiatry study, an area they were reluctant to venture into due to the unappealing nature of the very facility that’s supposed to admit patients, and the stigmatisation of the patients and to some extent the workers.
Staff at the hospital should be able to properly look after patients and the structures there too. We will closely monitor happenings at the hospital.
WHERE IS THE GREENBELT ON WESTERN AREA MOUNTAINS?
Successive governments in post-conflict Sierra Leone have made quite a fuss about keeping the mountains along the Western Area green and free from encroachment by people desperate to build houses of all shapes and sizes. To stop the depletion of the forested areas, particular points were identified and labeled as Green Belt. No building of any sort was to be built on the greenbelt and that was the emphasis from the onset. Structures found to be in places in clear breach of the order, were to be brought down. We were informed they wanted to protect the forested areas and in a broader sense, our eco-system.
Men and women in jungle green military-style uniform called forest guards were recruited and tasked with patrolling the mountains including other forest reserves in far flung areas. But many people are not sure these guards have been effective enough in getting encroachers off the greenbelt. You go to a place called New London close to Jui/Kossoh Town in the east, the very dam that has been serving water to residents down Kossoh Town has dried up because houses have been built around it and the pillaging of the forest is continuing further up the hills around. The water catchment surroundings are gone in man’s mad rush and recklessness to erect their sometimes ugly looking houses.
Forest guards will tell you that they are hamstrung in effecting control because of the attitude of guys at lands ministry. Cutting trees for coal and firewood up the Freetown Mountains happened way back in the past but it wasn’t as ferocious and damaging an act as that of people now building houses with not even a little care for nature not to talk of the law. It would make sense if the authorities erect pillars that are brightly colored and obviously visible to even us down the mountains, to define the area of the greenbelt. By so doing, encroachment could be seen from far away by even the visually impaired. For now we are bold enough to say the greenbelt is not practically visible or workable!
Copyright © 2021 Politico Online (19/03/21)
