By Septimus Senessie in Kono
Member of Parliament for Constituency 45 in the Neya chiefdom of Koinadugu District, in northern Sierra Leone has claimed that 90% of children in that part of the country are out of school.
“This is because of the unattractive conditions of educational facilities in schools such as poor school structures, inadequate teaching and learning materials and the lack of trained and qualified teachers”, Lahai Marrah lamented.
He claimed that only the school principal was on government payroll and the only junior secondary school in the chiefdom.
“These to me are horrendous and frustrating,” he lamented, and called on the attention of government and development partners to help them out of their “misery”.
The MP had gone to donate some road rehabilitation equipment and footballs to community youth groups. The gifts included shovels, sledgehammers, machetes and pickaxes worth millions of leones and meant for the Dalbalma, Warehkoro, Tenchedu and Porpon villages.
While handing over the equipment, the MP expressed appreciation to the Porpon village youth in particular for embarking on the rehabilitation of a 9-mile Porpon/Kurubola feeder road, describing it as a “laudable venture”.
He said such an endeavor would impact development in their communities before the intervention of outsiders who he said would not appreciate the numerous challenges of their communities.
He rekindled the energies of the youth and urged them to undertake self-empowerment activities in the communities.
Marrah encouraged the youth and community elders of the constituency to embrace “peace and unity”, describing the two words as “the threshold for sustainable development”.
He clarified that his functions as MP did not mean undertaking constituency development activities, noting: “Our roles as members of parliament are to enact laws, perform oversight functions and approve budgets”.
He, however, stated that it was the primary function of local councils across the country to bring development in their wards and therefore told them to always be on the “throat” of their councilors to do so.
On the situations of his people in Constituency 45, the MP pointed out that poor educational facilities, poor healthcare delivery systems, poor access to pure and clean drinking water facilities and poor sanitation were amongst several challenges they were grappling with.
The village headman of Porpon village, Sheku Bassy Marrah, thanked the MP for his gestures, describing him as the “Moses of our time.”
