By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority offices in Lunsar has resumed work on Wednesday following a break-in on Monday. The incident left a security officer injured and properties worth millions of Leones carted away.
The head of the Lunsar office, Badara Tarawallie told Politico that they have resumed work amidst fear and suspicion.
“We are concerned now about insecurity. We are also concerned with the fact that we will have to look everyone coming in now to do business with suspicion; even innocent people,” he said, noting that it appeared that “the thieves are people who knew the operations of the office.”
The SLRSA is a revenue generating institution. As part of its functions, it handles license and registration of vehicles, motorbikes and all other machineries that use the roads.
Tarawallie said he believes they were targeted because of an assumption that they might be keeping a huge sum of the money they generate in the office.
“Am convinced that we were attacked because of the misconception that we might have money in the office. They failed to know that all monetary operations happen through the bank and that we don’t deal with cash,” he said.
Armed robbery is on the increase across the country. Over the last few months there have been numerous complaints of attacks on private and public properties.
The SLRSA headquarters in Freetown have since condemned the attack on their property and staff and have called on the Police to swiftly investigate the incident.
Ibrahim Sannoh, Deputy Executive Director of SLRSA said in a statement: "I urged the Sierra Leone Police to speedily investigate the issue and let the perpetrators pay for their criminal act."
Tarawallie said his office have held an engagement on Tuesday with a visiting team from the SLRSA headquarters in Freetown and the Police in Lunsar. He said they have requested at least two armed guards to constantly protect the property.
“As of yesterday (Tuesday) the Police have given us one armed guard to secure the premises. However, we requested for two; one in the morning and the other one at night,” Tarawallie said.
© 2019 Politico Online
