LET’S IMMUNIZE PUBLIC OFFICIALS AGAINST CORRUPTION IN SALONE
One million United States Dollars sent to this country by kind-hearted people to help us immunize our children against killer diseases has gone missing. We don’t have the statistics in place but we can safely say that thousands of our children have either died or have been condemned to a short life on earth.
This is a very serious as further support has been suspended indefinitely. We believe there are more people and even bigger heads involved in this most foul of thefts. This nation will not accept any ACC whitewash that will indict lowly civil servants and clear ministers. They should be punished for either being complicit or criminally negligent.
As a nation, we should now start thinking seriously about immunizing our public office holders against the corruption bug. Here we suggest a few action points:
- Pay all government workers a decent wage. Use Joseph Kamara’s 48 million leones a month salary as benchmark. By our rough calculation, the last messenger in this country will receive 5 million leones a month.
- Scrap the bogus and totally ineffective Procurement Agency and create a new and powerful Fiscal Services Agency to handle all government expenditure. They must outsource their fiscal management responsibilities for ministries like Agriculture, Health and Defence to private agencies with a proven track record. We hate this business of Project Directors managing their own finances.
- Create people’s oversight bodies to properly monitor budget implementation. Please don’t tell us you rely on the structures we have now. They have failed. Otherwise, how come we are now crying for one million dollars and it took the efforts of an international agency for Sierra Leonaens to know of this theft.
AGENDA FOR PROSPERITY – WATCH OUT FOR THE SIGNALS
After winning a second term as president, De Pa proclaimed an AGENDA for PROSPERITY. Long Live De Pa, we shouted for “Salone Messiah”. Now in the weeks following that and as we prepare for inauguration, De Pa’s main campaign trump card - continuous electricity appears to be in terminal decline. Take a look at a few signs that the agenda is being derailed.
- Residents of Freetown have finally made peace with the much vilified Kabbah Tiger (the stone that the builder refused is now the head corner stone). The thing has been restored to its former glory.
- All projects that were being frantically carried out day and night in the weeks leading up to the elections have all ground to a halt:
KONO ELECTRICITY - All the cables have been pulled back, the workers gone home and the place remains dark.
SOLAR LIGHTS IN FREETOWN - We all saw the workers in reflector flak jackets climbing poles. Where are the lights now? We are still in Freetown and we know the story.
HILL COT ROAD PROJECT – There was a guy on radio everyday talking about the project and bla, bla, bla. They had two old machines near Gwent Height and a small works yard. Last week we strolled by and the machines were gone – no work done.
We want to still believe that De Pa can deliver a prosperous nation by 2017. But the signs, as you can see are not very good. We urge all the people of Sierra Leone to stay awake with their Kambo, Kabbah Tiger or Chinese-made torchlights at all times for we know neither the day nor the hour when the prosperity train will roll by because the city is too dark.
MANO RIVER UNION SECRETARIAT BUILDING: BADLY IN NEED OF PAINTING
Every time we pass by the Mano River Union secretariat in Freetown, we feel terribly ashamed that this country has been given the responsibility to host a union that is supposed to be very important. In fact the state of that building adequately represents the attitude of MRU leaders to this question of Regional Integration. It’s a big joke.
The Mano River Union secretariat is supposed to be the nerve centre of all activities ranging from trade and commerce, including the free movement of people to transnational crimes like drug-trafficking, people smuggling, money laundering, small arms movement and all that.
But looking at that building from outside, we conclude that there is no capacity within to deliver on any of that. Let them prove us wrong. Ask any pupil in Freetown about MRU and wait for the answer. We doubt it very much if the secretariat has any money to carry out its programs.
As if all this was not enough, about ten yards from that DELCO HOUSE, raw sewerage is flowing freely across Lightfoot Boston street right under the nose of Mayor Bababode. If the Mayor can’t clean that rubbish let’s move the MRU secretariat. It’s so disgusting. The Anti-Corruption Commission office is just next door, so is a main government building, housing several government departments. This is very serious.
AIRTEL CUTS MEDICAL BENEFIT TO LOCAL STAFF
What’s going on at AIRTEL? Can they please tell us? We hear that local staff and their families will as from now not get any medical benefits – only a select group ofworkers are eligible. We don’t have the details but we think this is a dangerous development that continues to nail home the view that some animals are more equal than others at Airtel.
We also hear that the Indian company is bringing in workers from home all the time into senior positions despite the fact that they depend on Sierra Leoneans for help on the job.
We have no objection to the movement of labour across borders but we hope the notoriously inept Ministry of Labour in Sierra Leone is aware of what is happening at AIRTEL. Just a quick word for the Indian owners of AIRTEL: Please make sure you don’t bring anybody here with the same mind-set as those who raped that woman on a bus in New Delhi.
SLBC STAFF SACKED BY STEALTH: GBANABOME STYLE
There’s always something newsworthy coming out of the “public broadcaster”, the SLBC. Well not in terms of their programs – they are largely mediocre but most times it’s about how the very place is run. In this edition of Politico, we invite you to start reading a report commissioned by the UN and done by Elizabeth Smith, former Secretary General of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, CBA. It’s the report they didn’t want you to see.
Now we’ve just been told that SLBC has handed out letters to their staff thanking them for their services and this and that. We weren’t told about end of service benefits or why all those workers are still in post. We know of workers who’ve been sacked four times but are still in the office receiving what little money is available.
If after reading this report, De Pa and the ACC refuse to act, it will be up to the people of Sierra Leone to let the SLBC know they’ve failed and aren’t capable of coming back.
The ACC say they have a three month deadline to conclude an investigation from the day they begin work on a case. They’ve had more than a year since the KPMG report on the SLBC was released. If they indict ministry of health staff without addressing the nation on the state of the alleged corruption at SLBC, we will finally give up on the ACC under JOSIE.
INTRODUCING SHARIA LAW BY STEALTH IN SALONE
We are slowly moving towards taking our place as a nation of sharia law alongside Zamfara state, Nigeria, Yemen, Afghanistan and so on. How else can we explain this? We have a new set of police officers trained in both tactics and ideology at the notorious Samu Camp and unleashed on the people of Sierra Leone.
As you move along the roads in Freetown it’s easy to see them in dozens holding long whips with which they beat Sierra Leoneans for the funniest of reasons. Munu appears to have lost his sense of human rights believing that Sierra Leone is his personal property.
This crude attempt at instant justice will not stand.
Where’s the Bar Association? We’ve been waiting for them to go to court and get a declaration against Christiana Thorpe’s attack on our civil liberties by ordering us not to drive our cars on election day. But unlike their counterparts in Kenya and Nigeria, the Bar Association’s only action is to issue press releases. We know that the job of fighting injustice in Sierra Leone rests with the media. Nobody is looking up to the Bar Association and the members of that organisation know that.
(C) Politico 05/02/13
