GENERAL DEMBY OPENS ANOTHER BATTLE AT MOHS
We owe it to the people of this country to tell General Demby that the good people of Sierra Leone are totally not amused by what is happening on his watch in the Ministry of Health and Sanitation right now. Our healthcare delivery system is in so much difficulty and instead of, perhaps declaring some kind of emergency to compel the government to direct more resources into frontline services there; we have a civil war in the ministry, with General Demby attempting to crush the Chief Medical Officer. From what we now know camps are forming with all sides protecting their interests. We’ve been promised a deluge of leaks as the big guys in that ministry fight to destroy each other to prove to Sierra Leoneans that they were the good guys in this saga.
General Demby has blocked the routine rotation of district medical officers and proceeded to force the Chief Medical Officer out of office for good on so-called terminal leave. The stage is now set as those who support the ousted CMO are engaged in sabre-rattling with General Demby’s own people. We have carefully read the long letter written by the CMO now forced into retirement and we find it interesting. We are not the only people who are disgusted with administrative infighting while patients die in hospital facilities across the country, there are more than a million Sierra Leoneans complaining about the way the ministry is running our hospitals all over Sierra Leone and what we get is an unnecessary and destructive civil war in MOHS.
For now, we want General Demby know that:
1. He knew all along that the CMO was due to proceed on terminal leave, so why did he have to wait until this moment to push him out? Is he not telling us that if the CMO had continued to dance to the Demby tune, there would have been no terminal leave talk?
2. By the way, is it a minister that should send people on terminal leave or is it the HMRO that should deal with such administrative matters? We don’t know what’s happening in the civil service these days but we ask because we are very scared of a possible ministerial overreach.
3. Anyway, for General Demby to believe that the civil war will be over with the departure of the CMO is like believing that foreign aid will make Sierra Leone another Qatar. The CMO has allies on ground that are going to do everything to demonstrate how angry they are with General Demby’s decision to send their man home for good.
4. General Demby chose to ignore the suffering of that woman with scissors in her abdomen as a consequence of a criminally stupid clinical practice but here he goes fighting the professional head of his ministry of routine matters. We will hold him responsible if anything happens to that woman.
4. Anyway, we warn the CMO NEVER to write such a lengthy letter and begin to hope people like us would read it over and over again. He could have made his point in three short paragraphs. We will spend the next two weeks reading it and then throw our perspective in on the issues in the letter.
AND THIS THING ABOUT CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
A really sad thing about the disgraceful episode of General Demby fighting his CMO is that all official documents relating to the incident are now on social media. We are sure they were purposely put there to embarrass each other. They have ended up embarrassing the good people of Sierra Leone including the man who put them in office.
We live in a free society and information sharing is part of the freedom we enjoy in Sierra Leone but for official documents that ideally should remain in the files at Youyi building to be plastered all over social media is a crazy thing to do. Actually, it didn’t start with MOHS because every appointment from State House, even internal documents have all been released on social media just to create unnecessary sensation around the issues. In this particular MOHS case, the letter General Demby sent to his Permanent Secretary instructing him to send the CMO away and the actual letter sent to the CMO are now all on social media. We are strenuously trying to exclude the lengthy write up from the CMO but even that ought to have remained in their files.
We don’t know how much more embarrassment should be caused to the good people of Sierra Leone before somebody somewhere did something about this habit of putting all official documents on social media, revealing the gory details of a very unfortunate affair in a ministry we expect so much from.
JOHN KEISTER IS ON THE EDGE AND THE PEOPLE ARE NOT AMUSED
John Keister, the coach of our national male football team, Leone Stars is finally trying to struggle his way out of a real mess of his own making. We reported about a week or so ago about the way the London Boy tried to deal with a strike for pay and good conditions by the national under-20 female football team. His style was to threaten some of the girls in the team, telling two of them in a leaked audio that he would “fight” them and eventually get them out of the team. The audios have finally gone viral and social media outrage has forced the SLFA to announce that the whole affair would be investigated and action would be taken against those found wanting. Now Keister has put out a statement apologizing to the young ladies and vowing never to sin again. Let the investigation take place.
First of all, Keister had no business inserting himself into this business, talk not about all the threats he made. He has simply soiled his good boy reputation and now people are beginning to think about the goings-on in the Leone Stars camp. Here is a coach who after many years is still unable to deal with a small problem on the field of play jumping into another camp to threaten people for asking for their rights. How about finding a way out stopping Leone Stars conceding disgraceful LAST MINUTE goals all the time?
Why did Keister wait for the SLFA to announce an inquiry before issuing an apology he didn’t even sign? We want to tell Keister that this is not funny at all. We are paying him big money for the job he is doing so we will not tolerate childish behavior from him.
We want the SLFA to release the name or names of those who will investigate the issue and their term of reference IMMEDIATELY. We also ask the SLFA to make that inquiry open to the media. The good people of Sierra Leone should get the full details. We must end threats and bullying in our sporting disciplines. Let’s start with football.
WHEN THE NATIONAL INTEREST MATTERS SALONE WATCH UK
When the national interest comes into play the people of serious countries always come together to deal with those issues. An MP from the ruling party in the UK has just been stabbed to death as he met his constituents in his office. That’s something they do all the time. We saw pictures of the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition laying wreaths in the same place, demonstrating to the British people that fighting for power does not extend to issues like that. We applaud them for that.
We are living in a country where partisanship prevents people from acting in the national interest. This is a real shame in Sierra Leone – funerals, Independence Day celebrations, the national football team winning laurels, promoting our country abroad, all of these are treated as partisan events boycotted by some people who withdraw to the sidelines to launch social media attacks. Our politicians exploit every little thing to score cheap political goals. We can’t agree on moving traders away from the dangerous and narrow streets of Freetown in their own interest, we can’t agree on stopping people building dwelling shacks in dangerous slums or mudslide prone areas of Freetown. We can’t agree on anything.
Many of our MPs don’t have constituency offices so they will NEVER be stabbed there. In fact those who have managed to have one never visit those offices. It’s just for the auditor general to see a building marked as such so they can account for the huge money we provide for that. If the killing of this MP happened in Sierra Leone, instead of coming together to deal with that threat to democracy, the whole affair would have been turned into a mighty political football. It would have taken tribal and regional dimensions depending on the background of the person who stabbed the MP. We are really not serious about nation building.
Copyright © Politico Online 19/10/21
