When the Poverty Reduction strategy Paper (PRSP) Program was instituted around 2007 or there about, it was to implement projects to reduce poverty of marginalized, depraved and vulnerable people. We have had PRSP I, we have had PRSP II. We were on PRSP III which the government dubbed as Agenda for Prosperity (A4P) but then perhaps the Ebola carnage through everything into jeopardy, including the much trumpeted agenda For Prosperity. Well as things stand, it looks like the poor may remain poor for a very long time, if ever they will be bailed out of it.
For Freetown, much of the poverty challenges emerge from the ever teaming population in Freetown where, as the name implies, people are left free to do whatever they feel or like doing. If you tell me that the current Freetown population could be anything around 2.5 million, I will definitely not argue much with you. When you look around and see the number of people that occupy houses in the city, then you know how serious this whole housing business is. It is now very common for people to build houses or shacks even under bridges and water ways with all the attendant risks. We keep crying about lawlessness and recklessness but yet people continue to be just that. People want to stay in this city at all cost never mind if they live beastly lives. The collapsing of the King Jimmy Bridge about two years ago in the heart of the city trapping and killing some people was indeed a sad event that could have been prevented. I say so because casualty could have been reduced if people were not leaving in shacks built under the bridge.
What I cannot understand is why authorities sit by and do nothing about people building in prohibited areas and lives are lost. I can remember in the days of the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), the Khaki Boys succeeded in removing people from dangerous areas. In particular houses were broken along the Hill Cut Road. No sooner than the NPRC handed over power, than people returned to that area and rebuilt their houses and it was business as usual.
The Musician, King Fisher is indeed a genius for his political satire music Politics Put We Behen. We all know that all the recklessness and lawlessness which has been most manifest in latter days has its roots in politics. No doubt it is the Freetown voters that determine the winners of our national elections. So every government seems to condone non compliance to the rules of ordered society becase of votes. I am sure you remember the vexed issue of Commercial Bikes when they invaded our city and the rising spate of accidents. Many people cried loud and clear for them to be regulated. This never happened until after until recently when the hard fist of Paolo Conteh gave them the necessary upper cut and to send them out of the ring.
When it comes to making our laws effective and monitored firmly, both the present and past governments have proven incompetent or lacking in political will. I talk here of both the Kabbah and Koroma administrations. Operation WID came to curb indiscipline and bring sanity to the traffic. This failed woefully despite the fanfare it initially generated. Take the right hand drive situation in the country. The police Spokesman in around mid 2012 went on radio and boasted that come October 2012 no right hand vehicles will ply the routs in the country. After a couple of weeks he was on air again to clarify that all poda-podas on right hand drive should transfer their passenger doors to the right on the off traffic side. Nothing was heard again until September at which time we were told come September 2013, no right hand drive vehicle will be allowed in the country. Well you can easily judge if we are serious in this country. Have our ever followed anything through successfully? Is bad governance not the main bane of our crawling country? Are we not having many evidences of bad governance?
I find it rather unfortunate that those who live on tax payers’ sweat hardly think they should be accountable to them. It is also unfortunate that many people, if not all go into politics in order to line their pockets. The gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening because those at the top keep pushing the rest of the people down.
Let us go to Bomeh and KrooBay. Years back when these places were not too crowded, they should have been moved to other sites. People will argue that every city all over the world have slums. This is true but I think the places ours are situated are making them vulnerable to all sorts of diseases. In Bomeh, Kroo Bay and tens of their kind, the shacks are wall to wall and they have little space to move around.
Interestingly if you are in a vehicle passing by these areas, what you easily notice are the antennas popping off the roofs indicating that these communities have televisions and other entertainment gadgets. Some even have satellite dishes indicating some amount of affluence. We are told that a lot of the people there are ok with their situation. When the idea of relocating the people living in the slums was abandoned, NGOs and Civil society organizations decided to support the communities to live better lives where they are. What these Bodies forgot was that the locations are not ideal and will never be. Let us don’t forget that houses have collapsed in areas close to the sea.
What gives all these human interest is the fact that the poor are the subjects and objects of this environmental abandonment. When you go through guard Street, you find many sore sights. Our foods sold in their along the streets are virtually placed on the dirty waterish muddy ground. How can we prevent diseases year in year out? Our food virtually keeps constant company with dog shit, but of course the market women had long been made immune to filth.
Come on, how we can be so careless about the food eat and yet we get annoyed when we are said to be among the poorest. We cannot get rid of disease if we continue to be careless about how we handle our food. In his address to Parliament on the occasion of the state opening of the first session of the Fourth parliament of the Second republic of Sierra Leone, the President had this to say, “We will reintroduce the sanitary Inspectors and review and modernise our sanitation laws.” Mr President these are good ideas but we are yet to see them at work. Down in the east of the city our cassava leaves and others are sold right on the bare ground on the street sides. I can remember in those good old days the Sanitary Teams moving round the city ensuring compliance to sanitary regulations and also disinfecting gutters and spraying chemicals to prevent rodents and all sorts of household pests like cockroaches.
One vector that many sierra Leoneans care very little about, are house flies. As if they have known the meaning of their names, most flies now sleep in houses and behave like mosquitoes. Man, it is only because of malaria, but mosquitoes are far better than flies that carry filth under their feet and distribute them with impunity!
Those who still put all the blames for where we are especially on health perhaps need to have a deep reflection. We keep depending on other nations for our very survival and yet we think we are a sovereign state. Like Clare short once said, “Sometimes we beg so much that we beg for the papers to write the begging letters”.
By Beny Sam
Tuesday July 19, 2016
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