By Septimus Senessie in Kono
The commissioner of the Children’s Forum Network has accused the government of Sierra Leone of having “seriously breached” Part 2, Article 4 (1) of the 2007 Child Rights Act. In an exclusive interview with Politico in the eastern town of Koidu, Edie Sam said that the above provision mandated the government to “establish a child commission that will serve as a forum for child representation in parliament.” Sam maintained that in 2011 at the Bank Complex in Freetown he was democratically elected by his peers as the Child Commissioner of Sierra Leone but claimed that government did not allow him to function in that capacity. While he commended government for passing into law the Child Rights Acts in 2007 and the introduction in 2011 of the free health care for under-five children, their mothers and pregnant women, Sam said that was not enough and called for provision to be made for children six years and above. “To me the free health care is a mere cosmetic help to children in Sierra Leone. Mind you most of our colleague children in Africa normally die within the ages of 0 to 10,” the 17-year-old Sam said. He pointed out that in his nearly 3-hour long statement in parliament, President Ernest Bai Koroma mentioned no new meaningful thing about children. “To me targeting youth without grooming children makes no sense because for us to get useful youth we must first groom them up,” he chided. On child mining, the child rights activist recalled that over 50% of children in their teens were engaged in sand, stone and gold mining in Kono district alone. He said most of them had dropped out of school because of this. When contacted the minister of children’s affairs, Moijueh Kaikai, said the government was working to get the commission up and running which he said should not be done in a hurry or by government alone. “Many other organisations like the Sierra Leone Bar Association, the interreligious council and other related bodies are parties to that arrangement” the minister said, urging that children’s representation should not be drawn from Freetown alone “as that is likely to be the case if we are not careful. It must represent a national body,” he said. Mr Kaikai said that children are very central to the focus of his ministry and that of the inspiration of the government’s agenda.
