News

By Mustapha Kamara

Despite the 3 days lockdown and sensitization process which led to discovery of many dead bodies and Ebola victims, Sierra Leone’s President, Ernest Bai Koroma has said that the Ebola Virus is still alive in the country.

Speaking on the just concluded lockdown, the president stated that the exercise had helped the government to know that people infected with the virus were still hiding, adding that that was because they had not been well educated about the disease.

By Septimus Senessie in Kono

Descendants of Kono district based in Freetown have donated assorted food stuffs and seed money to the district Ebola taskforce at a ceremony held at the Koidu council hall.

By Septimus Senessie in Kono

Minister of Local Government has slammed natives of Kono district who reside in the Diasporas for “persistently using social media to criticise efforts”she and vice president Samuel Sam Sumana are making.

Finda Diana Konomanyi Kabbah was addressing a hall full of paramount chiefs in Koidu town when she claimed that they were being “unfairly blamed for directly responsible for the divide and the non-development of the district”.

By Bampia James Bundu

Executive secretary of the Sierra Leone Chamber of Agribusiness Development has warned that there is a possibility for people to starve after the Ebola virus will have subsided in the country.

Ahmed Nanoh told a press conference in Freetown that the Ebola outbreak had “rendered farmers useless and agricultural materials are languishing”, adding that the outbreak had scared farmers away from their farms. He said the farmers had been and continued to receive conflicting messages about Ebola.

Inspector General of Police says his officers are ready to provide adequate patrol and security for the three-day lockdown which begins tomorrow aimed at containing Ebola.

Speaking to Politico, Francis Munu said their support would be wide-raging to include providing dispatch riders to be able to move blood samples of suspected cases, to managing toll-free call centre numbers.

He said they had requested burial teams to collocate with the police at their stations so that "we will provide escorts for them to areas where deaths have been reported" as well as for burial.

By Mabinty Kamara

There was confusion yesterday at the Sierra Leone Muslim Congress Secondary School at Kissy in Freetown where thousands of people turned up to receive food supplies ahead of the three-day nationwide lockdown.

A community-based organisation, CIDO was due to distribute bags of rice to more than 1,600 residents of the area who had been registered by the organisation which is an affiliate of the UN World Food Programme.

By Joseph Lamin Kamara

Officials of the Maada and Fatima Bio Foundation have been trying to quell a row over the legal status of the organisation which was launched last month under a storm of protest from the Ministry of Children's Affairs which accused the chairman of the foundation Julius Maada Bio of defying government directives.

In a letter written to the Foundation, the ministry called the organisation "unregistered" asking that the launch be deferred until it had followed "necessary procedures..to rectify this anomaly."