MAKENI GENERATOR VIOLENCE COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED
Lives were lost in Makeni when police opened fire on rioters ostensibly opposed to the transfer of a power generator to Lungi town where the country’s main airport is located. The violent reaction to what was an attempt to relieve fellow Sierra Leoneans experiencing blackout in another settlement has generated a lot of debate. We would try to make out how the whole thing was played out to maybe make a sense out of it all. From information gathered so far we can as a result highlight the following:
1. Energy Minister Kanja Sesay explained how he contacted top APC officials including Secretary General Osman Yansaneh and briefed them on the temporary transfer of the Makeni reserve generator.
2. An EGCT official corroborated the Minister’s claim and even spoke of having a meeting that also involved the Makeni city mayor Sunkari Kamara and that the mayor’s team promised to get back to the Ministry officials in a weeks’ time. After a week and having not heard from the Makeni delegation, they rang up madam Kamara again to remind her about the promised feedback to which she again promised another week more but never got on to the electricity officials again.
3. Makeni city enjoys 24 hour electricity supply from the Bumbuna dam and with the turbines in full operation from gushing waters this rainy season, Makeni is assured of uninterrupted power.
4. The reserve generator is used in the dry season when the dam’s water level drops. And electricity officials say by that time, they would have bought the parts for the Lungi generator.
There are many questions that needed answers though and the foremost one is why Sunkari’s side never got back to the other party. Even more suspicious was the Makeni Council’s failure to even explain to residents about the planned temporary relocation of the generator.
The central government must investigate what must have driven youths into such condemnable violence that saw attempts to storm the police armory and vandalizing of the ruling party’s Makeni office.
The whole matter has a level of insincerity somewhere and people are now trying to hide away from what was their inaction in addressing government’s effort to have the town of Lungi lit up, as the airport reopens up to the world.
And the loss of lives could have been avoided had our police beefed up their presence and resorted to the use of less lethal force. Our Police ought to be retrained on tackling protests without loss of life.
People too have to stop this persistent use of youths to satisfy their often unpatriotic and misguided inhibitions.
We are waiting to see how the government handles this latest violence though.
SOMETHING IS DESPERATELY WRONG AT BSL BANKING HALL
We are enthusiastic supporters of the Treasury Single Account established by the New Direction as one of many measures to track income and expenditure in government affairs. Before now we had the bizarre situation of government racking up debts with commercial banks with the banks using money stored there in some of the zillion bank accounts held their by government Ministries, Departments and Agencies and charging huge interests. It was a really crazy, even corrupt situation that Principal has destroyed.
Having said that, we must now note that there is a big problem in the banking hall at Bank of Sierra Leone and we urge the Professor from Greely to deal with that quickly. We’ve been hearing repeated complaints from people going there to make payments about the very long time it takes to complete a simple transaction – like paying say, one million leones to a service provider for something people need urgently. With due respect to some of the diligent staff there that those who have complained to us have not encountered but there people there who, by their attitude to work are beginning to undermine confidence in this requirement to pay for services at the Bank of Sierra Leone.
People say the process is slow and it would appear as if some animals are more equal there than others and we wonder why. Ordinarily this is too minor an issue to bring to the table of the Professor from Greeley but the fact that this has been going on so long under the noses of the supervisors next door, tells us that those supervisors are not interested in protecting the public against their lazy staff who have created a situation in that Banking Hall that favors a few people over the majority of ordinary Sierra Leoneans. This is very serious. BSL should be able to effectively and speedily discharge responsibilities assigned to it. We will be monitoring things there in the days and weeks following this publication.
ROGUE WATERLOO BUS DRIVERS FLEECE PASSENGERS
People traveling along the Waterloo – Freetown route go through hell every day because of the actions of very corrupt bus drivers. And these men conduct themselves in a way that creates the impression they are a law onto themselves. No questioning and certainly no arrest by the police. The reckless act by the drivers is done during rush hour. Seeing the teeming crowd of commuters in the morning in Waterloo they would say their final stop is Ferry Junction. The limited availability of commercial vehicles forces the commuters to jump in though in reality their normal and authorized point of disembarkation is PZ in the business district of the city.
Commuters are compelled to pay for the Ferry junction journey in desperation and immediately they leave the vehicle, the bus driver or apprentice would call out again that they would be going to PZ. Those who can afford the extra fare would jump onboard with others having no choice but to walk the rest of the way into the city.
In the evening, the same Waterloo drivers pick up passengers from PZ and announce Jui junction as their final destination. They again collect fares and the passengers disembark but just about then again, they call out that they would be going to Waterloo. The passengers would then board once more, for what is another fare. So in reality, passengers spend twice or even more daily, than what is the legitimate fare authorized by the Transport Ministry. The traffic division of the police knows that what the bus drivers are doing is illegal. But why can’t the police get these crooks arrested and punished? In this period of COVID-19 and its harsh economic conditions, the people commuting must not be fleeced by such a bunch of rogue bus drivers.
ANOTHER MASSIVE SLFA BLUNDER: BO RANGERS WILL NOT TAKE PART IN THE BIG DANCE
We totally agree with the decision of Bo Rangers to pull out of the SLFA’s fatally flawed process of selecting teams from Sierra Leone to represent us in continental competitions. Weeks ago we called for the SLFA to stop even hoping to re-start the league that was put on hold when COVID-19 struck this country and declare Bo Rangers, the leaders at the time as champions. There was nothing controversial in that. In fact much more advanced leagues have just done that.
What the SLFA did instead was to arm-twist the Premier League Board into calling the clubs together to announce that it was up to six of them to agree on which of them will represent Sierra Leone. We were utterly shock that SLFA could collapse so easily when called upon to take a simple decision like this. Here’s an organization that enjoys being in charge of everything now passing their responsibility to other people. Come on guys!
We totally agree with Bo Rangers. Apparently after a careful consideration of the issues they have now issued a statement saying they will not be part of a process that gives priority to teams with the strongest financial means as opposed to be playing good football on the pitch. We called on the SLFA weeks ago to declare Bo Rangers as champions on the basis of their position on the league table at the time the league was halted and close this chapter but they dithered and eventually ended up in a fine mess of their own making.
We just feel a little sorry for the well-intentioned leadership of the Premier League Board that allowed themselves to be bullied into taking and announcing this flawed decision. All they should have done was to write their report of the league up to the time it was stopped and pass the job back to the SLFA. Well done Bo Rangers.
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