News

By Mustapha Kamara

Chief Immigration Officer, Alpha Kholifa Koroma says they will soon be issuing about 20,000 passports to  Sierra Leoneans who had applied over the last six month.

Speaking at press conference in Freetown, he said all those who would be issued with the citizenship identity documents were people who had been delayed due to a shortage which he said was as aresult of the department being at the implementation stage of its plans to move to a digitalised system. A switchover which he hoped would happen in January next year.

By Aminata Phidelia Allie

Director of Sierra Leone Prison Services, Sampha Bilo Kamara has disclosed that there has not been a single case of Ebola in all 17 correctional institutions across the country since the epidemic broke out in May.

He was speaking at the handling over ceremony of Ebola preventive materials from Prison Watch, a local non-governmental organisation in the country.

He said the prison service had been highly proactive to ensure that no case of the disease was recorded there.

French charity on the frontline of the Ebola outbreak has criticised UK’s decision to cancel the first direct flights to Sierra Leone after the British government revoked Gambia Bird’s recently granted permit to resume.

Médecins sans Frontières said if the government was going to stop commercial airlines flying to the region it would have to put in place state alternatives.

By Mohamed Massaquoi

Pujehun district council chairman has told an Ebola taskforce meeting that the health sector in the southern district has failed in the fight against the disease that has claimed over 900 lives across the country.

Sadiq Silla said: “health workers have not been working in the interest of the district...their major concern is incentives. They have completely forgotten about their responsibilities in the whole process and they lack discipline”, he claimed.

By Mustapha Kamara & Jenneh Braima

Hundreds of commercial biker riders in Freetown have condemned statements made by Sierra Leone’s deputy minister of political affairs, Karamoh Kabba, that: “over 60% of commercial bike riders are foreigners from neighboring countries”.

The embattled minister told Politico, after the impasse that ensued between the police forces and ‘okada’ riders when one of their colleagues was knocked down and killed by a truck as he tried to escape being arrested by traffic police.

By Crispina Cummings

Chairman of legislative committee in parliament has urged colleague parliamentarians to be aggressive in getting their constituents to understand the implications of not heeding directives from health workers against Ebola.

Ajibola Manley-Spaine, MP for constituency 103 in central Freetown, said their efforts around Ebola sensitisation must take a different level going forward because “our constituents are not responsible and this is frustrating us in the fight against the Ebola disease.”

By Aminata Phidelia Allie

Defense lawyers at the military tribunal presently trying 14 soldiers of the Sierra Leone Armed Forces have argued that their clients have no case before the court and that they should be “acquitted and discharged”.

The four defense counsels, whiles making their separate no-case submissions on behalf of the incarcerated soldiers on different dates in September and October, urged presiding Judge Advocate Otto During to “discharge the soldiers because the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt”.