A BIG SHAME IN THE HEART OF OUR CITY: WHERE IS SLRA?
We are waiting for SLRA to tell us what is really happening in the general area around Eastern Police station, one of the most chaotic places in the heart of this city. Have a look at the pictures below and tell me if somebody who has never been to Freetown would believe this is an area in a place as important as that. Traders and thousands of people commuting to and from work daily and law enforcement officers mix freely throughout the day as they go about their normal business around this hub.
It’s very clear from what we saw that apart from the very poor state of that section of the road, there is a very big problem with the sewage system as dirty water flows freely around. We cannot allow this to continue for even the next 24 hours. We need the SLRA to stand up and do something about this.
Why is it that when it comes to road works in the affluent west of the city, the SLRA fall over themselves to fix things but not so in the east where the majority of the people live and are very poor? The road at Hill Station is now undergoing a makeover but SLRA will pretend they don’t know about Eastern Police. We serve notice that as with the Hill Station situation, we will keep this disgrace at Eastern Police on the agenda until something is done.
OKADA TOUTS AT FBC - MODEL JUNCTIARE SHOULD LEAVE
If you are driving to Model Junction on the Hillside bypass road, driving to the east from Dwazark Junction you will see a group of young men to your right and dozens of motorcycles taxis behind them. Those young people are engaged in a very dangerous struggle for passengers for those OKADAS for a small commission. It’s from what they collect on that road that they survive so we understand why they are so desperate and reckless.
Hundreds of people from the mountain villages of Leicester, Regent and Gloucester and hundreds of FBC students assemble in that place in the morning and evening to commute to work and school and the way the OKADA touts go about getting them into their taxis or on the back of their OKADAS is dangerous. The boys operate in the middle of the main road and in some cases literally pluck people from the back of one OKADA to the other.
We hope it never happens but the day a vehicle malfunctions on approach to Model Junction from Albert Academy, we will be in for something very serious. The whole Model Junction area is becoming a totally impossible place.
We see police officers around with some Road Safety Corp but we don’t think that bringing order to that place is what they are trying to achieve. We are told FCC workers also collect dues from traders.
We’ve been calling attention to various issues around Model Junction on the Hillside bypass road. We are happy to be ignored once again because sometimes it feels really good to come back and say WE TOLD YOU SO.
OUR LADY OF MOUNT CARMEL SCHOOL NEEDS URGENT ATTENTION
If authorities don’t act now, there could be a disaster of unbelievable proportions at Grafton community just outside Freetown. We are not exaggerating this at all. It’s a serious matter having to do with the learning environment of our children.
At any one time the school holds about FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY pupils and as you can imagine they are mostly children of the poor people living in and around Grafton. The school building is in poor shape. We are not engineers but we have reason to believe that a section of that building may just give way and collapse unexpectedly if nothing is done quickly.
We understand the school is government-assisted and that inspectors from the Ministry of Basic Education have been there and their attention has been drawn to the disaster waiting to happen. We are publishing this just to let the authorities and the general public to know what’s happening on the ground. We will not accept any excuses should delays lead to something serious in that place.
We will talk about classroom size and other concerns in the days of COVID-19 later. For now let somebody do something about the school building and prevent a catastrophe.
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE AIR-CONDITIONING SYSTEM IN PARIAMENT?
Something was definitely wrong with the air-conditioning system in our parliament the other day. Parliament is where the whole nation meets so the idea that the good people of this country should meet in a place that could within a few minutes become another Sahara Desert is something we don’t even want to think about.
If this is about supplementary budgets then we urge JJ Blood to hurriedly do one and get it approved otherwise let Kothor Abass use available funds to fix the air-conditioning NOW.
We will be up the hill in the next few hours to check the temperature inside the well. Thank you Kothor Abass.
FCC AND THE SERIOUS MATTER OF PUBLIC TOILETS
A frequent Western visitor to Sierra Leone has always stated that the country has all it takes to become a tourist paradise but highlighted a number of areas we need to address properly to make it happen. And one particular fault line he mentioned was the lack of public toilets in the city. We cannot agree more with his viewpoint. Let’s forget about tourists in the first place; public toilets are a must in cities and towns in even developed countries these days. One can count the public toilets within the business district area of this our capital and they are not hygienic at all.
Also in visiting any of them you are in the first place put off by the often thuggish and intimidating looking men in care of those places. Which woman would dare go to such toilets with all the ever growing reported incidences of gender based sexual violence. The conditions at those public toilets are a smack on the face of basic hygiene. Imagine the much vaunted desire for a tourist influx and the embarrassing state of no good public toilet in downtown Freetown. Even citizens coming to town often face very uncomfortable experiences to attend to nature’s call. Some are even turned away when in desperation they go to private residences to ease themselves.
Clean and safe public toilets must be seen all over Freetown. We hope public toilets are an integral component of the much publicized Council plan to transform Freetown.
Council is collecting taxes from the people and must be seen to be equally concerned about the needs of the taxpayers. Yes we have pristine beaches, breathtaking mountains and promising wildlife that many people would want to see. But as we pride ourselves in all of these, we have to keep those simple things as public toilets well and truly erected all around Freetown which is the first port of call for all tourists coming to Sierra Leone. We need public toilets please FCC!
Copyright © 2021 Politico Online
