RASTA SENGS YOUR PRINCIPALS ARE KILLING PEOPLE
It will be difficult to prove this but it’s a fact that principals and their teachers are killing parents trying to get their children admitted into certain schools. We’ve been told by a handful of parents that they were compelled to pay huge amounts of money because the children fell a few points short of the grade set out by the schools.
We are talking about FREE EDUCATION being the flagship program of the New Direction and we have no doubt a lot of progress has been made to get many children into schools but this yearly drilling of cash from the shallow pockets of our poor people is casting a long, very long shadow over Principal’s signature project.
We’ve been told that when parents go to particular schools to seek admission for their kids, they would ideally be met by a teacher or some well-dressed guy posing as one who would quickly strike a conversation and then offer to help. This ever helpful person would then ask for the big money for the school authorities and their own commission for doing this great job. Eager parents would oblige and the admission process would be complete within minutes. Otherwise, the parent is sent away to look for help elsewhere.
In all of this we have not heard a word from the SCORPIONS of the ACC. This is not even a difficult job to do because the school authorities are doing it shamelessly. It’s also as if they are telling RASTA SENGS to stay at New England and stop telling them what to do.
We have taken up the responsibility to do this because the typical Sierra Leonean parent is too shy to stand up fight this blatant corruption of the school system. They prefer to cry in little corners or stick a few lines on social media.
Let the SCORPIONS go into action now. We will have no problem with the ACC doing that public show at the Cotton Tree AGAIN.
FEW WEEKS INTO THE SMOKING BAN IN SALONE: HOW ARE THINGS?
We are extremely happy about the ban on tobacco advertising and smoking in public throughout Sierra Leone.
This is a very good piece of legislation that this parliament passed and we wonder why the bill lasted so long at Tower Hill. We don’t have precise figures but we believe the lives of many non-smokers and smokers have been saved.
The next step now is to make that action by parliament truly effective once signed into law. There’s no point enacting some legislation for the purpose of satisfying an international requirement while the societal ill the law was supposed to correct continues as if it was business as usual. Perhaps we are among the last countries taking action against the killer sticks. Principal should speedily sign this law and put the structures in place to demonstrate that he means business.
We also hope that at least some of our people who like to light up all the time would be persuaded now by all the restrictions to give it up. Some people will need help defeating the habit. We don’t believe this country is well prepared in that direction so it’s time to ask for international help.
So there are a few more little bad habits we should attack and defeat quickly otherwise we will find ourselves going further down a steep hill. We may not need parliament for some of them because we believe there are laws in place already but some people in some big office should get serious about their job. Here goes:
1. Let’s act against those who like urinating in public. They are all MEN. We know we have problems with public toilets in the city of Freetown but that’s no excuse for MEN to be spraying urine all over the place. We should hit them hard in their pocket with instant fines in the same way the road safety corps fine drivers who break the rules.
2. Those that go to the second level and relieve themselves in dark corners should be put in an even more difficult position. Landlords should be brought before the courts for renting out their properties without providing good toilets for their tenants.
3. Throwing rubbish on the streets is another major menace to deal with. This is the city where people collect mounds of rubbish in their homes and then dump it on the streets in the dead of night. We can’t really understand when any sane person would behave that way. There are also those who easily thrown litter from car windows as if that was a normal way of life. This MUST STOP.
4. We don’t know how this will be done but seriously we should help some young women dress properly on the beach at weekends when they go jogging. Frankly some dress in a ridiculous way leaving us to wonder whether there mission is really about jogging or creating some side attraction.
FAYIA SELLU TAKES THE OATH AT STATE HOUSE
IG Sovula is well and truly now a retired police officer. Compared to some of his predecessors, Sovula didn’t stay long in office but he will be remembered for his style and the few controversies around his administration, so well documented on social media. We wish him well in his retirement. Who know, he may soon pop up somewhere as a consultant.
Many Sierra Leoneans didn’t see the hand of Kotor Juldeh in all of this. We saw it clearly. He is head of the Police Council and while Principal may have made the final announcement, surely the recommendations came from the desk of Kotor Juldeh. Is it any wonder that the man named the deputy IG was once in the office of Kotor Juldeh?
We will return to this issue in subsequent editions but today we want to repeat those issues that IG Sovula failed to do that IG Sellu should not play around with.
1. His predecessor promised and failed to withdraw his officers from traffic duties on our roads. Why make a promise that you don’t intend to keep? The activities of some of these officers are giving the SLP a bad name. There is the road safety corps to deal with traffic matters. At least drastically reduce the number of officers and send the rest into communities for beat patrol.
2. Sellu should re-organize the media and outreach division of the SLP. Bring back ASP Samuel Saio Conteh who was punished unjustly and build the media operation around him. He is a good man. Please, completely change the way you engage the media and conduct other outreach activities. Force for Good is generally out of touch with modern day communication realities.
3. Clean up your detention facilities and close down Benghazi as a place where ordinary people are detained for minor offences. High value criminals like drug traffickers and terrorists can be held there but even at that point the normal rules of detaining people should apply. It is only for its maximum security nature that we won’t call for its closure.
4. Senior officers should stop undermining their bosses with bogus social media posts and wicked media briefings. This cycle must stop.
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