By Saio Marrah
As a way of temporarily alleviating the September 19th 2021 fire affected residents of the Kroo Bay Community in Freetown, Partnering to Serve Humanity a consortium of humanitarian organizations has supported the community with relief packages.
The relief items by the consortium which includes food and non-food items, school supplies and cash to support the affected families will complement a 21 day feeding of over 800 victims that they had been engaged in since the incident, an exercise that is expected to end this Saturday 16th October.
In his statement at the handing over of the relief items at the Prince of Wales Secondary School in Freetown, on Thursday 14th October, 2021,the programs manager for Caritas Freetown, Ishmeal Alfred Charles, said that the relief items, and the 21 days feeding of the fire affected people cost a total of about over 74 thousand dollars.
The Executive Director of the Caritas Freetown, Peter Conteh, noted that their gesture is to complement the mandate of the National Disaster Management Agency as the world on Wednesday 13th October 2021 commemorated world disaster day.
He noted that the relief items will not exactly replace what they had lost, but will serve as a stepping stone for the affected. According to him, their aim is to always be the first organization to arrive in disaster communities for aid and be the last to leave when all the headlines about the disaster had faded out.
He said this aid promulgated from the discussion they had with the city council as to what needed to be done and later with the disaster agency.
The Deputy Director, Relief and Response, at the National Disaster Management Agency, Tomaye Morlu Brewa, noted that their job is to coordinate the work of other agencies in response to disaster issues. “ Since the establishment of the agency by the president, we have responded to 58 disasters across the country, we have responded to 962 houses that were affected by disaster, we have responded to over 15, 000 people so far,” he said.
He admonished the fire affected people to prevent what he described as man-made disasters that range from using inappropriate appliances, overloading electricity metres to building houses in waterways.
The Councilor of Ward 431, the community where the fire incident occurred, Murray Allie Conteh, having thanked the NDMA and its partners for their intervention, noted that this is a very difficult time for the affected people. He said other fire affected people in other communities had not benefited in such ways. He therefore admonished them to take good care of the items and make sure they utilize them well.
The fire outbreak reportedly claimed properties of 585 slum dwellers in Kroobay , a densely populated community along coastal part of central Freetown. It is said that the fire outbreak was caused by an electrical fault.
Partnering to Serve Humanity is a consortium of four organisations namely Tzu Chi Foundation, Healey International Relief Foundation, LANYI Foundation and Caritas Freetown.
Copyright © Politico Online 15/10/21
