GRAFTON POLICE STATION HAS A VERY BIG PROBLEM
As part of what we do we always visit courts and police stations and we are normally not surprised by what we normally witness but what when we visited Grafton Police station the other, we couldn’t believe the state of things there. The truth is that police stations are not leisure resorts but what obtains at Grafton Police station is a case for the IG and his senior management team and indeed the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone.
We were at that place for about TWENTY MINUTES checking up on some issue but the stench from the holding cell so engulfed the whole place that we were left very surprised that the police officers appeared so at ease in their place of work. We pulled one officer to the side and asked how they could possibly allow themselves to be made to work under such degrading conditions. The officer looked left and right to see if a superior was around and told us their persistent complaints have been ignored so they have to make the best of a bad situation to feed their families.
As we spoke, an inmate was brought out of the cell because he had told the officers he felt like throwing up. To our surprise, the young man was either quietly allowed to leave or he managed to escape. We saw officers checking here and there as we left the stinking police station.
We will visit again in two weeks and that’s enough time for the following things to be done:
1. IG Fayia Sellu should cause that place to be cleaned up so that his officers and the guests in the cell can breathe some fresh air. They certainly cannot continue like that.
2. The Human Rights Commission should visit Grafton Police Station and other such places to make sure rights are respected.
3. The other point is that the Grafton community has grown so big in recent times that the police station looks so unrealistic both in terms of size and the personnel deployed there. This is something IG Fayia Sellu should be thinking about.
JACOB ZUMA AND THE POLITICAL FORTUNES OF THE ANC
Old man Zuma is feeling very good about himself owing to the outcome of the recent elections in South Africa. His MK Party is still challenging the results but he is quietly happy that his FIVE MONTH old party is in a good position to play a kingmaker role with their 58 MPs in the 400 member parliament.
Zuma was not allowed to complete his presidency as he was forced out by his ANC colleagues. He has been in and out of court facing all kinds of corruption charges and even went to jail for contempt of court. The old man appears to enjoy the political struggle. The embattled ANC now need Zuma to be able to form a stable government but Zuma is trying to get more than his pound of flesh by asking for the head of President Ramaphosa. Now the game is on.
This is a crucial week in South Africa as the new parliament should meet to put the structures in place for the smooth governance of the home of Nelson Mandela. The ANC is thinking hard and planning to avoid Zuma. They are actively thinking about working with the Democratic Alliance – the party that succeeded the Apartheid era National Party. That will be a mighty gift on the lap of Jacob Zuma. He will go back to the people and tell them the ANC has lost its way and he was the only person to protect the freedom and basic rights of the BLACK people.
Zuma tells the world he is still a member of the ANC but believe it or not he may well have put in motion the process of dismantling Africa’s most powerful Liberation Movement. We are watching events from the West side of Africa.
CABLE CAR MAYOR IGNORES SANITATION CHALLENGE
Freetown Mayor’s CABLE CAR project is still in the pipeline. Well, it's been a long time now and she hasn’t said anything about that. We asked a senior Tolongbo councilor about the project recently, he waffled his way out of it. We ignored him because he was in a difficult position trying to explain an idea that even the big woman is refusing to talk about these days.
Anyway, she has a few more years at City Hall, who knows? What concerns us immediately is the way she has also abandoned the city in the area of sanitation. Forget those nice pictures of our Mayor on social media; we live in a very dirty city. We share dirty streets and markets with those people with British accents who spend a good portion of their time on social media complaining about the cost of airline tickets. We are here talking about WAKA FINE and the unsanitary condition of our city. We pay our taxes in Freetown but our Mayor appears to have lost the plot so early in round TWO.
Usually reliable sources have told us she is planning a big crackdown on Illegal Street trading in September. Why September? When is she going to crackdown on people throwing rubbish all over Freetown?
It’s one thing to tell gullible people in the West, including respected media institutions about planting ONE MILLION TREES that ordinary folks like us living in this city have not seen, quite another to believe that one day even those gullible Westerners are not going to get tired of being told ALICE IN WONDERLAND STORIES.
STOP DEPOSITING BUILDING MATERIALS ON OUR STREETS
This is now a common practice that must stop. Not too long ago we read a press release from the Sierra Leone Roads Authority warning against the habit of people building houses using our roads as stores from sand and stones. It’s not as if they would pour the items on the roads for a few hours and then clear the road again. Sometimes it lasts for weeks, even months and during that period vehicular and pedestrian movement is badly disrupted.
Those who are in this habit know very well that they are infringing on the rights of other Sierra Leoneans but they just don’t care. This is something that must stop immediately. It’s happening in many places so both the smiling Tik Tok Mayor and the SLRA cannot tell us this is news to them. In fact why would SLRA issue a press statement about something they know nothing about?
We are living in a city where some people think they can do anything. This is a country where politicians like the Tik Tok Mayor believe they should first consider politics before the welfare of the good people of Sierra Leone. To issue a press release and not back it up with action is to tell the subjects of your statement to always ignore you because you are not serious about anything.
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