FSSG BROOKFIELDS IS SLOWLY BEING TAKEN OVER
We know that all secondary schools should have governing boards. The usual practice is for the Ministry of Education to appoint the members from among institutions and past pupils of the school in question. This is normally a powerful body with a mandate to watch the school and ensure the learning environment is conducive and that teachers deliver their courses well and on time. So they are very powerful indeed.
Now we ask: where are the members of the board of governors of the Freetown Secondary School for Girls, FSSG? Are they telling us that what is happening on their fence with Hannah Benka-Coker is not their business? We have waited for more than a year for the school authorities to institute court action against petty traders who have set up permanent stalls on that wall, cesspit vehicle owners, Bike riders, marijuana sellers and smokers, vehicle maintenance boys and many others who are definitely impacting activities inside the school in a big and negative way. Their numbers have increased dramatically to that extent that they will soon enter the compound proper.
Recently, it took the new Minister of Education himself to get one school to remove the painting of a naked woman from their school wall because of its inappropriateness on the walls of a school.
If those who run the FSSG find nothing wrong with what is happening near their wall with Hannah Benka Street, then we respectfully plead with Rasta Sengs to visit the school and initiate action to drive those people away from that area. The women who sell to the children at lunch time should be registered by the school and allowed to operate in a corner within the walls of the school. They will clean up the place at the end of each school day and return the next morning. What we have now near the FSSG is a disgrace and should be dealt. We will be back.
FSSG has always been a reasonably good school with well-behaved children so we will not allow it to fall. We will definitely be back with this issue.
CUT THE SPIN: THE PRICE OF OUR PASSPORT HAS GONE UP
The price of our national passport has risen to nearly a million Leones. Social media has been all over the story with spin doctors on both sides – one set shouting fire on the mountain and the other running copious rounds of reporting supporting or defending the increase. We have seen comparisons with other sub – regional countries that appear to be paying more for their passport. Be that as it may, we are primarily concerned about Sierra Leone and the fact is that the price of our passport is up and our income is in the same place.
That said, we will leave the grumbling with those who actually need passports. In fact they are not up to FIVE percent of our population. They are in the middle and upper middle class elite population bracket. There is no doubt that they can afford to pay for passports. Good luck to them.
What we are really concerned about is the fact that after more than a year in operation the National Civil Registration Authority NCRA has still not produced a single identity card. There are millions of Sierra Leoneans waiting to get their new ID Cards but there is NO WORD as to when ID cards will be released. We have reached a point now where the NCRA should give us the timeline leading to the issuance of the first ID card. We cannot continue in this way.
IS THERE A LIMIT AS TO HOW MANY COMPANIES A SINGLE MAN CAN SET UP?
It would appear as if somebody in the New Direction is behaving like the man Emmerson Bockarie described in one of his songs as Adebayo. In that sense, Adebayo is a man given to forceful acquisition of wealth and the concentration of power in his hands. As they say our comparison is not water tight as of now but by the end of 2020 we should be able to come back to our esteemed readers to say we are very sorry. But the sign we’re seeing now is beginning to suggest that another Adebayo could emerge in the next six months. At this point we call on Principal to stand up and take action. He must stop his own man with Adebayo tendencies. Otherwise the people will come to his doorstep one day to tell him he had ample warnings.
We serve notice that we have prepared a number of Access to Information requests by which we hope to get the facts about a number of companies from those baking bread to those bidding for our tele-communications gateway and how they relate to the new Adebayo in the making. The idea that ONE PERSON can spread across all sectors in this way both by himself and by surrogates is absurd and we are prepared to help the people resist it. READ POLITICO all the time. The honey moon is over.
THE FIGHT AGAINST RAPE IS FAILING
We will continue pressing this issue here until the Attorney General’s office deals with the natter one way or the other. To be honest, we are also doing this now because we fear that slowly but surely it seems law enforcement people are not doing their part in this national fight against rape in particular. In trying to defeat this menace we have gone through a state of emergency and a nationwide travel by Queen Fatima proclaiming HANDS OFF OUR GIRLS.
A few months back an alleged rape matter was reported to the Grafton Police. We are holding back the full details for now but one key point is that the alleged rape victim is a hearing-impaired THIRTEEN year old girl. Surely she is one of millions Queen Fatima is fighting to protect against predatory men. Cut a long a long story short, Grafton Police told us the files have been lodged with the office of the DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS, DPP. This was more than two months ago. We don’t know if that’s their way of kicking the issue into the long grass or not.
How long does it take the office of the DPP to give an opinion on a matter like that? Please keep in mind that it also took the police more than two months after interviewing all those concerned to even get the forensic report from Rainbo Center - all of that causing huge frustration for the parents of the alleged victim. Those parents grew up being told JUSTICE DELAYED was JUSTICE DENIED.
There is an open road we are refusing to go down right now. That road takes us to the suggestion, the belief among the family members of this child that every effort was being made to, as they say in Sierra Leone, KILL THE CASE. We will be back with this matter in a bit more detail.
We serve notice however, that in this particular matter JUSTICE WILL BE DONE. As a newspaper serving the best interest of the good people of Sierra Leone, we will make sure JUSTICE IS DONE.
