By Prince J Musa in Kenema
The Sierra Leone Network on the Right to Food (SiLNORF) has on the 17th September 2021 held a Multi-stakeholders engagement on the right of food and land rights issues affecting the communities in Small Bo and Dama chiefdoms.
Addressing the stakeholders from various communities in the two chiefdoms, the program manager for community Empowerment project implemented by SiLNoRF, Ibrahim Barrie said they advocate and support community people on their right to food and land.
He said the people have over the years been deprived of their valuable lands that provide food and livelihood for them, as a result of investment companies. Barrie added that the multi-stakeholders engagement will help to channel the concerns of the people to the donors and government to look into those problems affecting them.
One of the affected people, Tenneh Morie from Ngovokpahun, explained to the gathering how an Italian rubber company used the name of Paramount Chief Mohamed Dhaffe Benya of Small Bo to grab their lands from them. He said the town chief of the village Morie Sam persuaded her late uneducated husband to give out their sixteen acres of land which had cassava and oil palms that had started producing crops.
She said when her husband initially refused to give out the land, threatening to stab anyone that enters in the plantation, she said the entire township of Ngovokpahun community ganged up against him and was taken to paramount chief.
“Out of the sixteen acres of land that bears both the oil palm and cassava, the Italian man only agreed to give six hundred thousand Leones to my late husband,’’ he lamented.
Tenneh said her husband could not survive a sudden ailment related to the pressure he developed all because of the land leaving her with five children to care for.
The town chief of Ngovokpahun community Morie Sam said the Italian rubber company promised them certain facilities which they never fulfilled, adding that, the Italian company made agreements without consulting the community people and promised to provide university scholarships for their children as part of the corporate social responsibility, support people to travel to Mecca for the hajj and pay for each acre of land twenty thousand Leones yearly and build sixty dwelling houses for the people with a modern school but said none of those promises got fulfilled. ’’We have been deprived and oppressed for our lands and we want our lands back, the chief asserted.
Another aggrieved member from Pendembu, Dama chiefdom, Mohamed Sow accused the paramount chief of conniving with a Lebanese businessman of Diayuf Trading Company in Kenema to lease their land for cocoa plantation for fifty years and the family have pursued the matter to magistrate court and the matter was sent to local court but said nothing has come out of the matter three years on.
In his statement, the Kenema district Land for Life facilitator Aiah Charles Jabba said civil society organizations across the country should make an agreement with government institutions to ensure that all foreign investors are banned from serving as any primary producers of cash crops in the country and to focus on exportation, adding that, allowing investors to own land and become primary producers of crops will deprive the citizens of sources of income as most people depend on the cash crops to educate their children.
He warned the local people and especially paramount chiefs not to allow any land to be leased to investors for a long period and to consult land owning families over any agreement.
The regional officer east Environmental Protection Agency Abdul Kebbie told the people that, EPA is concerned with all environmental issues relating to land acquisition. He said EPA will have to investigate the Diayuf t company operating at Pendembu Dama to ascertain the authenticity of their license.
The Paramount chief representative from Dama, Francis Musa Kallon said one way the government can reduce land conflict among communities and chiefdoms is to ensure that communities and villages know their boundaries.
Copyright © Politico Online (20/09/21)
