News

*12 districts affected * 245 killed * 14,857 cases reported

A spokesman for the UN World Health Organisation in Sierra Leone has told Politico that the cholera outbreak is moving thick and fast throughout the country with 12 of the country’s 13 districts affected. The latest figures as at 30 August stand at 245 deaths and 14,857 cases reported. Koinadugu in the north is the newest district to have been hit by the epidemic with Kailahun district in the east the only place without a known case.

Civil society organisations in Sierra Leone have strongly denounced the execution last week of 9 inmates on death row in The Gambia, saying it represents “a tragic setback to efforts at developing a human rights culture in the region”.

In a press release issued by AdvocAid, Amnesty International Sierra Leone, Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law and Prison Watch Sierra Leone, they organisations say the executions placed The Gambia “out of step with its fellow African Union states, the majority of which are abolitionist in law or practice”.

A press release from the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists says its National Public Affairs Secretary for four years, Sayoh Kamara and the Vice Chairman of the Southern Regional executive, Melvin Rogers, have resigned their positions to contest for seats in parliament come November.

While Kamara is aspiring to secure a party symbol to contest for a parliamentary seat in his native Koinadugu district under the governing All People’s Congress party, Rogers is pursuing the same in Pujehun under the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party.

The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone has urged Parliament to speedily pass the Freedom of Information Act, the Gender Equality Bill and all outstanding human rights-friendly legislations before the end of the life of the current Parliament which ends in September.

According to a press release from the commission, it believes the passage of these bills “will lead to the full realization of fundamental human rights in the country”.

Meanwhile, the HRCSL has welcomed the enactment by Parliament of the Sexual Offences Bill into law considering it “a major development”.

The Attitudinal and Behavioural Change (ABC) Secretariat has held a one-day seminar for civil servants, which focused on “the core values of the civil service and how civil servants can restore and retain these core values for national cohesion and development,” according to a release from the ABC secretariat.

The workshop held at the Miatta Conference Hall with the theme: ‘Professionalism, Impartiality, Transparency, Neutrality, Selflessness and Integrity’attracted hundreds of civil and public servants, the release says.

By Mohamed Vandi in Kenema

Some 160 advocates trained in the sixteen chiefdoms in Kenema district by the UN Population Fund in Community Wellbeing have embarked on an advocacy campaign to promote reproductive health care in their respective communities.

The Regional Gender Desk Officer, East, told community people in Tongo, over the weekend that the campaign focuses on gender-based violence, institutional delivery, family planning and improving the health care of pregnant women.

The Gambian Government confirmed for the first time last night that nine death row prison inmates had been executed, the first since President Yahyah Jammeh took over in 1994.

It followed a threat by the president on 20 August, marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, that all those on death row would be killed by mid-September this year.