Despite recent assurances by the acting Director General of the Sierra Leone Roads Authority, Munda Rogers that rapid maintenance work was in progress on the Kenema Kailahun trunk road, report monitored by this press have indicated that commuters now sleep onboard vehicles at one the most deplorable locations Fire Burn, some seven miles to Kailahun town.
According to the cameraman attached to NaCSA, Desmond Cole who has just returned from Kailahun, over fifteen vehicles including were recently stuck in the area.
He said on their way to evaluating NaCSA projects in Kailahun, they were shocked to learn that the road leading to Kailahun after Pendembu was cut off with a fleet of both commercial and private vehicles caught up in the mid.
Cole said after spending substantial hours there without making headway, they had to make a u-turn to Kenema. Residents of Kailahun have on several occasions pleaded with Government to rehabilitate their road and to assign an SLRA engineer or officer but to no avail. The SLRA boss is on record as saying that had been made secured to do the first phase from Kenema to Kailahun and that they had grading it to avoid a cutoff. He also said that once the rains were over they would start work on both the first and second phases.
Meanwhile, Deputy Information Minister, Mohamed Koroma has disclosed that residents of the Goderich community have registered their disappointment over the slow pace of work on the road. The people say work has slowed down because President Ernest Koroma has officially relocated to his State Lodge at Hill station. David Fornie the Deputy Director General of SLRA, pitied the plight of residents of Goderich community, explaining that the contract was signed last year, but actual work had not started as they were doing the drainage while awaiting SIERRATEL and the Guma Valley Water Company to remove their assets before the work begins.
By Solomon Rogers
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