Now here’s a final word on the collapse of the Peter’s Brook Market “ARCH” from my “Personal Glimpses” before the dust finally settles. Because whoever imagined that the entire episode had no “déjà vu” was simply assuming the proverbial “ostrich-head-in-sand” character in a modern day tragicomedy, given the fact that our own disasters are not only seasonally perennial, but also almost predictable.
Monument and Relic
That disaster took a considerable number of years to happen, as both our “governors” and us the “governed” compromised virtually everything pertaining to safety and security of our lives and properties under the guise of a systemic self-destruct syndrome called “politics”, in a seemingly covert attempt to either “forcefully re-take Freetown” or systematically “destroy” whatever aesthetic or historic landmarks are left of it. Yes, the Peter’s Brook Arch is a monument and relic, and it ought to have been preserved just like the St John the Evangelist Maroon Church. I can also well remember the occasionally reproduced fable of “The Buried Ass’s Head at Fort Thornton and Ro-Marong”, and the implications they carry, but I remain very comfortable with President’s Dr. Ernest Koroma’s demonstrable commitments to national cohesion and political tolerance across the board.
Urban “Slum-ization”
Whatever the intention, everywhere in contemporary Freetown is suddenly up for grabs and with rapacious intensity hillsides, valleys, gulley, ravines, gorges, reservoirs, beneath culverts and bridges, archways, moors and fens nowhere is spared. Squatters have created habitations along the entire coastline of the city from – Cline Town to Goderich and beyond, burrowing holes under various bridges as they move on, like rodents.
“Urban Slum-ization” usually start with seemingly orderly and harmless structures such as Churches and Mosques. Then benches begin to appear along foot walks, to be followed by erection of market stalls. Soon a “Community” is formed, Chiefs are “crowned” and they begin to occupy the airwaves, participate in orchestrated Civil Society workshops and pay courtesy calls on their local Councillors and Parliamentarians to validate recognition. Toilet and other sanitation facilities are not pre-requisites. Neither is yard space for drying out laundry or even brushing dentures. Yet even with such intense pressure on its social amenities, some unconscionably continue to negatively compare Freetown with other far less populated provincial cities.
Tenants at Sufferance
In no time, with the Environmental Protection Agency, Office of National Security, Police, Judiciary etc all looking the other way, the Lands Ministry, National Power Authority, Sierratel and Guma Valley Water Company (of course under political pressure) soon allow for the necessary Title Deeds Registrations, and or utilities connections to “regularize” tenancies “at sufferance” of course!!! Any wonder then why in narrating the causes for the calamity at the Peter’s Brook Arch to H.E the President, the latter three companies received the greatest bashings from the survivors, “for digging up our area too frequently”?
It has to be added here however that the severity of that occasion notwithstanding, I take a serious exception to it and will continue to reiterate my aversion to exposure of our President’s personality among such rowdy and grief-stricken crowds in times of disasters.
The Peter’s Brook Market Arch might just be the focus for now, but virtually every archway, bridges and some slumping live electric poles is at risk. The main Congo Cross Bridge now has a “Landlord” whose house enjoy a birds-eye view of the rushing waters in the gulley below from his veranda almost sharing an adjacency to the protection walls spanning the bridge itself. But leave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) out of this please. After all the mere construction of dwelling houses in dangerous terrains do not emit poisonous fumes. I shall address the Office of Disaster Management in the final paragraph of this piece.
MDAs
In all, as many as seven poor souls reportedly perished at the Peter’s Brook disaster site and still counting. And true to his innately sympathetic disposition, H.E President Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma was at the site as early as he could, grim-faced as one struck with genuine terror and as I can telepathically assert, looking for immediate answers from among his supposedly trusted lieutenants (from various MDAs whose jobs it has always been to “do all manner of things so as to avert such disasters anywhere by a judicious and pro-active process of monitoring and evaluation structures and if need be promptly undertake routine maintenance works etc…..etc….etc..”) as to why it happened, how it happened, where to access funds to commence immediate rehabilitation of the Arch and how soon that work can be completed, but to all of which questions to my mind, he drew blank.
Hiding behind the continued charisma and popularity of the President, they cleverly and deliberately synchronized their arrival at the disaster site with the President’s convoy. Their displeasure and everything else was also synchronized with the President’s demeanour. They frowned, nodded and shook their heads disapprovingly when the President did, and understandably also disappeared from the disaster site immediately the President left, to avoid a new version of justice from a growing mob of “City vagrants” that do not seem to know that their own human rights end exactly where the human rights of others begin.
To my mind again, the sooner some heads of our MDAs begin to demonstrate leadership initiatives and take ownership of their own responsibilities, the better and far easier it will be for our already overburdened President. These are the “internal enemies within the APC” that Oswald Hancilles referred to in his piece in the Standard Times edition of Thursday 12th August, that must be “confronted, neutralized or vanquished” (and I will add exorcised from within our APC political party and governance frameworks) if indeed President Koroma’s vision to transform Sierra Leone into a “Singaporean-type” state should be achieved.
One of them was so condescending over the airwaves that he said of the victims “….six bodies have already been rescued and evacuated to the mortuary”. Knowing Dr. Simeon Owiess Koroma the Mortician as I do, anything that passes through him professionally is beyond “rescue”. Try him if you don’t believe me.
In all of this, God continues to move in mysterious ways. So a Minister who prides himself for turning the entire country into a “works yard” has had his job dimension divinely expanded through a “force majeure”. This is not a “Mabang Bridge” scenario!!. This is Freetown, and therefore an opportunity for him to prove his critics wrong, given the prominence of the disaster site and under whose watchful eyes every aspect of the entire rehabilitation processes will be undertaken, by matching costs to deliverables and within a reasonable timeline.
Urban Poor
To be fair to them the only difference between those who have constructed lofty mansions across formerly equally precarious landscapes (like the Joaque and the Robert Street Bobor-Komboh Bridges), and the Urban Poor under the Peter’s Brook and other archways (from where they spring surprise nocturnal attacks on peaceful commuters sometimes under the very noses of the Police nearby), is money. So without money, the urban poor continued to make do with tarpaulin sheaths which over time proved unfit to assuage both the elements and sustained drips of water sipping though the limestone and lateritic rocks forming foundations of the 71-year old Peter’s Brook Arch structure, causing it to collapse on the night of Thursday 8th August.
No matter what inherent benefits we as politicians reap from squatters, the governments being vicariously liable for any national calamities is obligated to enforce stringent rules no matter how discomforting they be to them, to stem the processes and to do so, both the Central and Local Governments must be seen to be speaking from the same perspective. For example, whilst the City Council is threatening forceful evictions of squatters from their various illegal places, a spokesperson was also on radio assuring the surviving squatters at King Jimmy that the very City Council “has agreed to re-locate them”. Enough of this pampering!! And those who keep asking where we expect them to go should first provide an answer to our question as to where the heck the came from in the first place.
ONS/Office of Disaster Management
My concerns about the Office of Disaster Management, a pertinent governance concept is two-fold. Firstly, there is a dire need for that office to enhance their “disaster response preparedness” (instead of their “disaster reaction preparedness” we are now used to) by being timeously able to co-ordinate other departments and agencies such as the Fire Force, Police, Military, S.L Ports Authority, S.L Airport Authority etc.. so as to either better prevent disasters or reduce the ensuing devastations.
Secondly, their present location within the Office of National Security has not added value to the operations. If the argument for that is because disasters issues are national security issues, then so is everything else that if not properly implemented, might have a tendency to derail government plans for national development and prosperity. I was privileged to have been invited to one of their slide show presentations on disaster sites around Freetown, and left that meeting peeved. A toll-free line for the citizenry is fine, but of what use are fishing gears to a nomad in the desert? Overall, there is an urgent need for greater commitment at enforcing laws in this ancient city to match its growing lawlessness.
By:Winstanley.R.Bankole. Johnson
August 16, 2013