WE MUST AVOID ANOTHER ROUND OF INTERNATIONAL COURT BATTLES
Are we walking into another court battle against another of the few significant foreign investors we have in this country? These days nobody wants to remember the long drawn out and costly legal battle we had with what is now Marampa Mining and the reputational damage that caused us. We are slowly gaining the reputation of a country where the leaders sign one agreement with a company only to revoke it a few years down the line and pass the same assets to other business concerns.
Just yesterday we watched a film of the launch of the ARISE IIP program in Sierra Leone. The ceremony took place on the eve of the last elections and Principal told the world that ARISE IIP would establish factories in that industrial zone; create tens of thousands of jobs and take control of the rails to transport their products and raw materials and transport passengers. The applause was deafening applause and Principal liked it as TV cameras took those pictures right into the homes of many around the world.
Now, we are hearing that the same government has decided they made a mistake and are now going to pass the port and rail facility over to the Chinese miner – Kingho or Leone Rock. We have not received any official explanation and that is because the government thinks we don’t deserve one. They are dead wrong.
We want all actions taken in our name to be clean and ethical. Our government should not be saying this today and doing something completely opposite the next day. We deserve to know why ARISE IIP is being treated this way. We are citizens of Sierra Leone so we call on our government to RESPECT their own pronouncements and tell us why the sky would fall if they didn’t ditch ARISE IIP.
OVERSEAS TRAVEL SCAMS TAKING HOLD IN SIERRA LEONE
There are many reports in the media these days about people losing big money to 419ers promising to facilitate their travel to the Western world. In one particular case concluded recently, a young man was sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence for failing to land the lady in France after receiving money from her for that purpose. According to court files he took the lady to neighbouring Liberia and her French dream ended right there. The young man told the judge he committed the offence because he wanted money to pay his University fees. That’s as far as we can go with this specific case because there may be an appeal down the line.
Of concern to us is the fact that despite the many reports in the media about such scams, people are still opening themselves up to the wicked guys so they can steal money from them. Naturally, we would expect people to learn from the experiences of others but as far as this overseas travel thing is concerned, the madness is increasing daily. Here’s why:
1. There are many young people who are so desperate to travel abroad that they are prepared to do anything, including selling their homes and paying people traffickers in Freetown or in the Temple Run project. Those kinds of people are going to end up in our courts trying to get their money back or sending the criminal elements to jail.
2. The obsession is driven by TV pictures and the lies that some of our people who are already in the West tell their people back home. As far as these desperate people are concerned, the moment they land in the West their problems would vanish. To believe such rubbish is to believe that our national football team would bring home the next World Cup trophy.
3. This is one problem we need to tackle in different ways. The judiciary is busy locking up those duping people in this scheme. That’s a good job. Let’s now embark on aggressive education of our young people so they know that what they see on TV is not necessarily what obtains on the ground in those countries. We should also tell them not to believe everything they see on social media.
WE HAVE A NEW AIRPORT BUT THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH TROLLEYS
We are still celebrating our new airport managed by SUMMA GROUP because it has completely changed air travel in this country. The airport has made a bold statement about the kind of country we want to be. Foreign visitors and our brothers and sisters who passed through the old Lungi airport have been impressed with what a private public partnership has delivered. Well done on that front.
On Monday, we were at the airport and realized that something as basic as trollies are in short supply. Kenya Airways and Brussels Airlines were on ground at about the same time and we saw passengers waiting for between TWENTY and THIRTY minutes to get a trolley then scan their stuff through just one machine. We need some explanation because it’s not even the peak season when hundreds of our people normally come home for Christmas and we are struggling with trolleys.
If SUMMA GROUP cannot provide trolleys and a second scanner, can we provide those services and collect cash as part of another partnership arrangement? We want SUMMA GROUP to know that we cannot continue like this.
WHY ARE MANY SIERRA LEONEANS FLYING OUT OF CONAKRY?
Many Sierra Leoneans are complaining that traveling abroad from our airport in Lungi is expensive and they save good money by driving across our northern border into Conakry to use their airport. What are we really doing here? Is it that we are operating here without looking over our shoulders to see what our MRU neighbours are doing? We are losing airport tax money to Guinea and they will soon notice the trend by making available shuttle buses from our common border to make life easy for people traveling from Sierra Leone.
Our transport minister was on social media the other day reporting a meeting with the operators of the new airport and suggesting that they have heard the concerns of the people and that action was being taken. We are monitoring to see if that was some lazy attempt at spin or the beginning of action to reverse the trend. This is something that started over a year or so ago but Sierra Leone is holding meetings only now to begin to address it.
We will soon check the following out to know how many own-goals we’ve scored, at least since the new airport was opened for business.
1. We want to know how many Sierra Leoneans have traveled to Guinea to fly abroad because they want to beat high taxes in this country.
2. How much money have we lost since the trend of traveling abroad through Guinea started? We are looking for honest answers.
3. Has Guinea started taking deliberate actions, like cutting certain taxes to draw in our people while we are being penny wise and pound foolish?
4. Our transport minister has met with the Summa Group that runs our airport, so what?
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