By Mabinty Kamara
There was confusion yesterday at the Sierra Leone Muslim Congress Secondary School at Kissy in Freetown where thousands of people turned up to receive food supplies ahead of the three-day nationwide lockdown.
A community-based organisation, CIDO was due to distribute bags of rice to more than 1,600 residents of the area who had been registered by the organisation which is an affiliate of the UN World Food Programme.
However, when the distribution got underway, hundreds more people that had been registered joined the crowd, demanding to be supplied the rice which had been earmarked for two people per a 50kg bag. This forced the process to be delayed for several hours.
According to Theresa Tucker of WFP, they had identified six centres for the distribution but that the "inefficiency" of their partner, CIDO, led to the clustering of some many people in one centre "which is not a good thing, giving that we are fighting against the transmission of Ebola."
Tucker said WFP provided the food for less fortunate people so they could have something to eat during the coming three-day lockdown declared by President Ernest Bai Koroma aimed at stemming the spread of Ebola.
A 60-year old woman, Ramatu Thoronka expressed joy at receiving the food referring to it as "God-sent". Many other people who could not get the rice complained about being "marginalised" and accused WFP and its partner of bias.
But the WFP official said the rice was supplied to only those who had registered, and expressed disappointment that at the time of registration, "many people refused to come forward."
(C) Politico 18/09/14
