By Hajaratu Kalokoh
The Minister of Lands, Dr. Dennis Sandi, has been named in a land dispute at Levuma Beach, Freetown.
Community people told Politico that the minister forcefully took the land from them and gave it to a private business man who reportedly intends to establish a Petroleum business.
Residents in the area said some of them were beaten and their properties were stolen by military officers who went to evict them on the orders of Dr Sandi.
Harbor Master at the beach, Simeon Kamara, told Politico that the community regained the land after a botched move by the Koroma administration to sell the land to another private investor.
Kamara, who said he had lived for over 30 years in the community, said they managed to reclaim the land somehow and were working on developing it until in November last year when Sandi walked in to take it over from them with the help of the military.
“During the APC regime, the government sold the land to someone by the name of Sonny Milton and people were dismissed from the land. After that period the community regained the land and commenced plotting land for people (Portor Levuma Community) to do beach Bar business, unttil November last year when the minister interrupted an ongoing construction on the beach land and assaulted workers, including a young couple who had been given a plot of land by the community and ministry of tourism to do beach bar business,” Kamara explained.
Kamara went on: “The following week, the minister came with a delegation including some journalists and announced that the people (investors) whom the land had been given to had given the Sierra Leone government $1m.
So, they want to establish petroleum business in the community.”
Efforts to reach Minister Sandi throughout the last one month of investigation of this story proved futile, despite a telephone call, a text message and a visit to his office.
Mohamed Bangura, who was allegedly assaulted on the property, explained to Politico that they got the land through a genuine process which included consulting the Ministry of Tourism and community stakeholders at Levuma.
He said despite this, Sandi ordered military officers to beat him and his girlfriend.
“The minister came with nine armed soldiers, disrupted our ongoing construction and ordered them (soldiers) to assault me and my girlfriend together with the workers whom we have hired to do our construction at the site. The minister took our phone on the basis that my girlfriend had wanted to video the scene," Bangura said.
He added: “My girlfriend's bag was forcefully taken from her. The bag contained an amount of 9000 euros including some money from our workers whom we have just paid for a contract about Le 4,000,000.”
Sources told us that the stretch of land may have been given to a company called African Petroleum Product.
Politico couldn’t get any official from the company to comment on the controversy surrounding their takeover of the piece of land.
The Member of Parliament in the constituency, Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, also expressed frustration over how the minister handled the issue with his constituents.
“The Minister did not engage with me, the Honorable in that constituency and the community people. This is about what is right. What is right is that government is a whole machinery and the minister of lands should not take any decision on his own (without engagement)," he lamented.
"As an MP, I took some of the people to hospital that were allegedly assaulted, and the police took statement from them. I have mentioned the issue in parliament; the Parliamentary Committee on Land has invited him (Sandi)," Conteh told politico in an interview back in December.
The trail of the investigation at the Criminal Investigation Department has since gone cold. An officer at the CID headquarters attached to the case told Politico that it was difficult for them to build a case if the ID number of the military personnel were not available.
The officer would not comment further on the issue.
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