Sierra Leone’s blind pupils cry for food

Dozens of pupils of the Koidu School for the Blind in Kono district have called on government to save them from further starvation. Speaking to Politico, they say they sometimes go to bed on empty stomach as only one square meal is most times guaranteed. The kids, aged between 7 and 15 years, say their compound is unfenced and thieves sometimes steal the little of what they have. 8-year-old Aiah Kemoh, who says that he wants to become a lawyer, appealed to government to help the proprietor and management of the school to tend to their needs. He says they need electricity and school materials. They number 51 with an additional 16 who are in different secondary schools being paid for by the Koidu School for the Blind. They complain that they face discrimination with some of them said to have been sent away from home by their parents apparently because of their condition. Essentially without the boarding school, they have nowhere to go but to the streets to beg and sleep. They are cared for by Tamba Mathew Gbessay, himself blind, who established the school in 1988 after he received his retirement benefit from the Catholic Church where he had worked as local translator. In 2002 the school was approved by government and in 2005 a classroom block was built for them. Gbessay says he goes around the district and in neighbouring districts looking for blind children to bring them and give them an education. He tells Politico that caring for the kids has proved especially difficult in the last couple of years owing to “inadequate and irregular” government subsidy. He says the main aim of the school is food, saying if the kids have it they will “regain their sight” psychologically and without it their “blindness will worsen”. Documents Politico has seen show that the state subsidy is a quarterly Le 20 million with which they pay eleven of their domestic staff including a cook, a guard and cleaners. They also pay the medical bills of the pupils when they fall ill, and fees for blind children in various secondary schools for the sighted. Gbessay says he is considering closing the school if he does not receive the help he needs to keep the kids, adding that even though that will be heart-wrenching for him to do even he will be left with no alternative. The deputy head teacher of the school, Sahr Simeon Thomas, says their domestic staff have threatened to go on strike because they have gone for nine months without pay which he says is owing to the fact that government has not paid their subsidy for the last quarter of 2011, the second and third quarters of 2012 and the current quarter of 2013. He pleads with government to look into their sitation and “save the unfortunate children”. Speaking to Politico, the deputy minister of social welfare, gender and children’s affairs, Mustapha Bai Atilla, himself blind, says his government will use all within their power to respond to the situation in the school. He expressed sympathy for their children for what they go through. (C) Politico 31/01/13