President Koroma
Sierra Leone has cancelled all celebrations marking Christmas 2014 and New Year 2015.
In a nationwide broadcast yesterday, President Ernest Bai Koroma said much as progress had been made in the fight against Ebola in the country with more health workers and treatment centres, a lot more needed to be done hence the tough new measures.
With Western Area accounting for more than half of the new infections in the last two weeks, the president announced the exercise codenamed “Operation Western Area surge”. This will see a two-week-long house-to-house search of areas deemed to be hot spots in and around Freetown.
He called on “all community leaders in the Western Area, from Political party leaders, Ministers of Government, Members of Parliament, the Mayor, Chairman, Councilors, tribal and village headmen, women and youth groups, religious leaders, traditional healers and cultural leaders to champion this exercise”.
The president urged them to go into their communities to encourage their people and ask questions about Ebola.
Sierra Leone’s Christians are to also go without celebrating Christmas and New Year all in a bid to stem the spread of the Ebola virus.
There will be no church services on New Year’s Day while church doors will be opened slightly on Christmas day with worshipers obliged to return home immediately after service.
“I know that this is the festive season where Sierra Leoneans often celebrate with families in a flamboyant and joyous manner, but all must be reminded that our country is at war with a vicious enemy that is still taking the lives of our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children and friends” the president said.
The exercise also means that trading is banned on Sundays while Saturday shoppers are to do so before noon.
Travel restrictions have been imposed with people banned from travelling outside their district of residence.
Some residents in the eastern Kenema district have opposed the announcement with a secondary school teacher there calling it “insensitive”.
The teacher, who does not wish to be named, said while Ebola was ripping their areas apart “only we carried our cross with stringent quarantine measures”.
With Kenema district having gone weeks with only two new infections, he wondered why they were being barred from celebrating Christmas or even attending church on New Year’s Day.
(C) Politico 18/12/14
