For the past five days residents in the central and some other parts of the Freetown Metropolis have been experiencing acute water shortage. The taps have gone totally dry forcing children to use the better part of their day pushing make shift carts around from street taps or toting buckets of water to their homes from street taps which seem to be the only ones working now.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Guma Valley Water Company Joseph Musa explained to Awoko that “we are now in the dries(dry season)” and “we expect it to be long say up to June.”
As a result Mr Musa said “the level in the dam now is slightly down and we are experiencing low pressure, because the quantum of water cannot supply the required pressure to pump the water into your houses even for us here at Guma Building – so the engineers are working on it now”
Mr Musa revealed that since “the level of the lake is now down and what is there is not being replenished we do not want to face the same situation as last year (so) we are now rationing.”
The Guma PRO explained further that they used to supply 23 million gallons a day but now they have reduced it to 16 or 17 million gallons a day.
Further rationing is expected in the coming weeks until the rains which are scheduled to start in late may start falling.
Peter Tucker amendments want office of Attorney General and Minister of Justice separated
The proposed amendments to the constitution which were unveiled last Thursday by the Chairman of the Constitutional Review Committee Dr Peter Tucker are suggesting a separation of the office of Attorney General from the Minister of Justice.
Speaking to Awoko Dr Tucker explained that the rationale for this is “ we still believe that in the interest of manifest justice – justice seen to be done, the Attorney General who is the government legal adviser and sometimes prosecutor should not also be the boss of the judiciary; he should be an advocate appearing before them to advocate but he cannot turn round after court – he loses in court he goes to chambers and he is their boss, we think this might create problems and we know from the past that it has created problem between the Chief Justice and the Attorney General and Minister of Justice.
Also he said “there is a development now in Britain where people are trying to create a Ministry of Justice so as to separate it from the government’s legal advisers and prosecutors – we want to be modern in this respect.”
On the question if there is a change in government whether he thinks the succeeding government will go ahead with the elections, Dr Tucker said “the political parties are all represented in this commission so I imagine that if any of them who wins if they are advised that it was good the amendments are good and reasonable I suppose they will go ahead with it.”
“The only fear I have” he added “is if a new government comes it has so many things to do that it may not concentrate its attention on an amendment of the constitution, and don’t forget that every change to the constitution which enhances the democratic process creates a bit of discomfort for those in power – because you know democracy is difficult therefore they may not they may say thank God we have a constitution let’s go on with this one so I’m not sure it depends on who wins.
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