By Hajaratu Kalokoh
The government of Sierra Leone has announced a bailout plan for the school bus service which was prematurely halted earlier this month due to financial constraints.
The Ministry of Finance said on Tuesday that part of the funds allocated to the monthly cleaning exercise will be reallocated to Local Councils which are managing the school buses.
The school bus service is a core component of the government’s flagship Free Quality Education programme which commenced in September 2018 after the government secured 50 buses from China.
The bus service is crucial to the success of the FQE, because many parents are unable to provide transport fares for their children. This is thought to have contributed to a lot of absenteeism, especially by pupils from poor background.
The buses were distributed across the country so that they are managed by district or city councils. But many of the councils had complained that they couldn’t sustain the service due to the limited revenue generated from fares paid by the pupils. And one major effect of this had been their inability to pay the drivers salary and fuel the vehicles.
Last week it emerged that the bus service had been halted in at least three districts. Politico confirmed that school buses were halted in Freetown, Bo and Kenema.
“The government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Transport and Aviation and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, in collaboration with the Local Council Association in Sierra Leone, has agreed to reallocate part of the funds for the national cleaning exercise to support the Free Quality Education school bus service,” the statement, signed by the Finance Ministry and dated January 21, reads in part.
It said the above named ministries and the councils would jointly implement the plan which was designed to see the buses start running anytime from now. Between them, a coordinating committee will be set up and operate within the Ministry of Transport.
Some Le2.8 billion is allocated every month for the national cleaning exercise. The Finance Ministry said about 20 percent of this amount, which translates to Le518, 060, 005, will be redeployed to the councils for the bus service.
The statement said this money will be used to pay for drivers salaries, purchase of fuel and fund the operations of the coordinating team in the Ministry of Transport and Aviation.
In addition, government will pay an amount of Le294.0 million in February 2020 to clear the arrears of driver’s salaries already accumulated by the 22 local Councils in the last four months.
There was however no timeline in the press statement as to when the bus service will resume.
A spokesperson for the Freetown City Council, which has the largest share of the school buses, told Politico that they were studying the statement from the Finance Ministry and would respond appropriately in due course.
Copyright © 2020 Politico Online
