THE COMING OF THE CABLE CAR: LONG LIVE THE MAYOR OF THE SUN
Last week ended with some very optimistic noises from the office of the Mayor of the Sun. We heard that our Mayor was having conversations with some people outside Sierra Leone to find a way to defeat the impossible rush hour traffic in Freetown. The Mayor of the SUN is actively thinking about introducing Cable Cars here. We even saw very social media photos of our Mayor possibly having a cup of tea with those interested parties somewhere in the world.
We have reached a point now with the intensity of traffic jams in our nation’s capital that we are prepared to consider all options to make Freetown more efficient. So we are very prepared to listen to our Mayor and discuss her idea of bringing Cable Cars to Sierra Leone. As with many other issues, we are waiting for our Mayor to supply the details of the project. That project will take time as much as it will cost a lot of money. So while we consider that and wait for the details we humbly ask our Mayor to think about the following:
1. Please organize parking in the Central Business District of Freetown. The city looks like a disorganized parking lot open to the possibility of people being robbed by the very street boys who illegally collect money that should otherwise rightly go into FCC coffers.
2. The FCC can do a better job of traffic management in collaboration with the police and SLRSA. In this city we have had to recently deploy the army to do simple traffic control. To manage the Cable Cars we may want to ask ECOMOG or UNAMSIL to return.
3. While we wait for the Cable Car our Mayor can be dealing with sanitation in central Freetown. There is raw sewerage flowing in the middle of King Jimmy Bridge and near Big Market. Surely this is easily dealt with.
4. We also urge our Mayor to help us clear that rubbish flowing from the Pademba Road Prison down to the drainage system on Dundas Street. We have complained for more than a year now. We refuse to be ignored on this matter.
5. Finally, will the Cable Car be powered by EDSA? We know why we are asking. And we are sure you know too.
AND ON THOSE DUMPSITE DEMOLITIONS BY FCC
The move by the FCC to demolish properties illegally constructed on land close to Freetown’s two main dumpsites at Kingtom and Bai Bureh Road is long overdue. We don’t yet know how far the FCC wants to go with this because their action would potentially displace thousands. They will lose their homes and their livelihoods because for the most part the people in those communities feed off whatever they are able to salvage from the mountain of rubbish deposited their daily.
While the rest of us applaud the action by the FCC for the health and general safety of those people, the very people are complaining as always. We really can’t understand how they came to live in those places in the first place. They are busy raising children there who know nothing other than going to the dumpsite daily to look for scraps and that include expired food.
We urge the FCC to ignore the noise and press on with the demolitions.
BAN CHRISTMAS BOXES IN ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICES.
We expect some Christmas Greetings boxes to start appearing all over the place in the next couple of weeks or so. In case this is your first time of spending Christmas in Sierra Leone, these are boxes that are normally wrapped in nice papers and placed on the desk of mainly private security agents and secretaries to public officials into which they expect every visitor to drop some change as Christmas gift. These boxes also appear at supermarket checkouts and petrol stations.
We want the government to ban all such boxes from Ministries Departments and Agencies because we think it’s a bad idea to be engaged in such naked begging inside government offices. At Christmas many people decide to be very generous to put people in the mood and bring them smiles even if it is just for one day. But those boxes are unacceptable.
We expect the secretaries in those offices to serve without expecting any rewards outside their salary. People can still give money or other gifts if they feel like without you putting in a box into which the attention of every visitor is drawn as they depart. This culture of asking people for money at every turn must stop.
The last time we checked we had received many envelops from church organizations for some kinds of events in those churches. Some of those envelops are from people who are planning to wed. As far we know people are invited to weddings and they willingly offer gift at the event itself. But the idea of asking them to contribute money to the planning of the event is a really long shot.
So no Christmas boxes in government departments this year please. By next year the private sector would catch up and by 2021 Christmas Boxes would be gone from Sierra Leone for good.
WHAT’S THE PLAN FOR THE MANY POTHOLES ON OUR STREETS?
The rains have left many potholes on streets in Freetown and on some sections of our major highways. We want to know from the Sierra Leone Roads Authority just what they are doing about those potholes. The tried-and-tested excuse about the rains disrupting road maintenance is no longer tenable. Please don’t want to hear about any plans. What we want is a date for the commencement of the work and we can even go forward to ask for the completion date, including the companies that will do the job and the cost of those spot repairs because we want to be able to monitor them to make sure we get value for money.
There are many such roads in Freetown and during a recent visit to the south and north we experienced many potholes between Rogbere Bridge and Lunsar in the north. The same applies to the stretch of road between Tiama and Bo in the south. Even without these many potholes there were many accidents on these roads. The current situation makes accidents or needless damage to vehicles even more likely.
The SLRA does not need to call a news conference to tell us what’s happening. We want to see press releases announcing the disbursements for the road works and people in action on our streets.
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