HOW TO SPEND ANTONIO RUDIGER’S EDUCATION MONEY
Now, it’s beginning to look as if as soon as Principal lands in London these days he finds a Sierra Leonean that is doing extremely well in the diaspora to step forward and tell the world they feel part of the country and would like to help in any way they can to turn the narrative of Sierra Leone around. First it was Actor Idriss Elba and now it’s Antonio Rudiger who plays for London side, Chelsea.
Apart from giving Principal and his wife his replica shirts, the footballer donated more than 100 thousand US Dollars to the country to support Principal’s Free Education initiative. By any consideration this is huge money that could make a significant contribution to the success of the project.
Since the news of that donation broke, we’ve been thinking of just how to spend the cash. First of all we appreciate the fact that the donation did not fall into the category of that donated by one Arab Sheikh for youth projects in King Messi days. There is absolutely no doubt about the exact amount of money donated by Rudiger.
Anyway, here’s how we think the government should spend this money.
1. Buy some decent chairs and tables for mostly those schools in deprived rural communities where children sit on the floor to get an education. Please remember to write the following words on the furniture – THANK YOU ANTONIO RUDIGER.
2. Invest in anti-violence programs in secondary schools in Freetown in particular. We recommend that you start with Albert Academy and Government Rokel. They are clearly the most violent school pupils in Sierra Leone these days.
3. Improve water and sanitation facilities and security in our schools
4. Just buy more rice to further support the school feeding program. Please pass every grain of it to WFP to work with their partners to implement the program. Don’t allow Afro Boy to turn up at your door with an arrest warrant in hand shouting ACC.
LOCAL COUNCILS FAIL OUR CHILDREN
Since the day the school buses were passed on to our local councils to manage they’ve been complaining about their alleged inability to break even in running the buses. They’ve been running the vehicles in a haphazard manner and fighting with the drivers over their salaries. We have to say that this is a real disgrace and all the councils should be ashamed of themselves. In the end the central government has now been blackmailed into launching a rescue operation to save their school bus project.
One the one hand these same councils are jumping all over the place calling for the devolution of functions to them but now they can’t run a school bus in the best interest of their own children. We believe these councils can run these buses as a social good but they have simply embarked on this elaborate blackmail to squeeze more money out of the government. And they have succeeded.
In the light of this development we make the following comments.
1. That the experiment to allow the local councils run a not for profit but a vital component of the Human Capital Development agenda of the government has failed. As far as we are concerned the school buses should be turned over to the SLRTC. That’s all.
2. Our local councils appear to be only interested in activities that bring cash into their coffers. They couldn’t care less about spending some of that money for the good of their children and grandchildren. What do they use our taxes for?
3. The government should withdraw all funding for the National Cleaning exercise from them and get the young people in the different communities who in fact actually do the work to set up small cooperatives to access the cash and do the job. Let the money-loving councils pay for their own cleaning projects.
CORONAVIRUS STRIKES CHINA AND PARTS OF ASIA: IS SALONE TAKING NOTICE?
The news coming out of the People’s Republic in the last week or so has been a little grim on the health front. International media organizations are reporting an outbreak of the so-called Coronavirus and more than a dozen deaths from the virus. The virus has spread to other countries in that region triggering alarm bells. We have even heard reports that special airport terminals are being designated to receive people from those countries reporting cases of Coronavirus. It’s getting serious as whole cities are being locked down like we did during the Ebola war. The question we are asking now is how prepared is Sierra Leone.
We have waited for a whole week to hear something from our Professor at the Ministry of Health but it would appear as if he is still in the lab checking things out, God knows what. China, in fact the whole Asian continent is far away from Sierra Leone but we cannot take anything for granted. There is a lot of travel between Sierra Leone and China – government officials, business people head to China almost on a daily basis. There a many Chinese people living and working here and they travel back and forth all the time.
We have no doubt that the People’s Republic is strong enough and has all the facilities to deal with the Coronavirus but if we are careless enough to allow it to land here, we will still be trying to clear it long after the Chinese would have finished writing the history of that period in the life of their country.
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