By Septimus Senessie
The civil society organisation Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) has donated food and non-food items to 90 households of 30 quarantined homes in the Kono District, eastern Sierra Leone.
The distribution of food items, which include rice, cooking condiments, among others, comes after huge outcries from quarantined homes in the district with some people constantly complaining of not receiving timely food supply.
Notably people in Sukudu Village in the Kamara Chiefdom and other quarantined homes in Koidu town have been making several telephone calls to Politico urging the media to intervene on their behalf.
NMJD also awarded two hundred thousand Leones to each of the 50 Ebola survivors in the district, alongside mattresses and bed sheets.
This is all part of a five-month project which started in December last year, and is being funded by the Disaster Emergency Committee in the United Kingdom, through Christian Aid.
Josepha Ansumana, District Field Manager at NMJD in Kono, explains that the project has two phases. Phase one, he says, seeks to address the present emergency situation in the country through the distribution of food and non-food items to quarantined homes and Ebola survivors.
The second phase, he adds, is intended to provide support for agricultural activities to Ebola widows or widowers as well as caretakers of Ebola orphans.
The NMJD representative however laments the limited resources available for distribution to the entire 154 quarantined homes in the district and fears that that may pose another challenge. Their desire, he says, is to provide support for all the quarantined homes in the district.
He describes the donation as a restoration of the “dignities of Ebola Survivors and people in quarantined homes.”
The coordinator of food distributions at the Kono District Ebola Response Centre, Sahr Dagbi, thanked NMJD for supporting their quarantine program. He agrees that to feed over 154 quarantined homes for 21 days is never an easy task to carry out.
In her quarantined home at Bungalow New Site, Tankoro Chiefdom, Kumba Allieu, 15, who lost her mother and younger sister to Ebola, received the food items in between tears and sobs. She thanked NMJD for the gesture.
© Politico 16/01/15
