By Prince J Musa in Kenema
The National President of the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society Rev. Sahr Christian Fayia has held a consultative meeting with staff and volunteers of the society in Kenema and Kailahun district at the regional office in Kenema.
Fayia told Politico that his tour of the region was to brain storm with Red Cross Volunteers on the lessons learnt around the Ebola response in 2014 since Kenema and Kailahun districts were badly affected during the epidemic. He said since Ebola resurfaced in Guinea and the first case of the last epidemic came through the same country, there is need for preparedness.
He said as an auxiliary institution to government in terms of disaster response, he has decided to interface with seasoned and experienced volunteers so that the organization will deepen its preparedness for any future resurgence of the epidemic.
He maintained that the engagement with volunteers will help build a stronger and formidable society that will change the negative image of the Red Cross in terms of integrity, accountability and transparency.
Rev. Fayia said the engagement with the volunteers will help transmit vital and constructive information to their membership and develop a stronger red cross society in Sierra Leone after its image was battered post -Ebola.
He said upon taking up office he discovered that there were many gaps existing between the administration and the regional branches and because of the break in communication a lot of things went wrong. He said based on the comments by the volunteers on their past experiences, all the good aspects will be developed in to a policy that will help sustain the smooth running of the society while the wrong ones will discarded .The red cross boss said the concerns of volunteers will be taken to the senior management of the society where they will sit with the governing body and proffer solutions to those concerns.
He stated that the current governing body and the administrative wing of the organization will want to make sure that it operates within the confines of the principles and ethics of the institution. He was of the view that to inculcate integrity in all of their volunteers they need to get their volunteers acquainted, acknowledged and well informed.
He explained that the senior management of red cross has engaged volunteers with regards to their preparedness and response in terms of contact tracing, disease surveillance and that they have already trained volunteers on infectious disease prevention control mechanisms in case of any outbreak .He said volunteers are now in their readiness with motivation given them after management has worked assiduously in identifying where things went wrong and with structures having been put in place for effective and efficient operations.
He claimed the international partners that were not comfortable with the society are now supporting it fully having seen a new and transparent management which enabled the institution to secure funds amounting to 2 billion Leones to support victims of the fire disaster that occurred at Susan’s Bay. He thanked stakeholders that gave land to the Red Cross at Ngielahun for the erection of a treatment center in the future.
Meanwhile the regional governing representative of the society, Sylvester Sidie Kallon encouraged the volunteers to serve as bed rock of the institution.
Momoh Vandi, one of the senior volunteers at the Kenema branch mentioned some of the challenges they encountered during the Ebola scourge especially communication gaps, romours about benefit for the volunteers that scarified to fight the epidemic, among others. He stated that there was no central command at the time in the area of information management.
Copyright © 2021 Politico Online 07/05/21
