News

Seven men, 11 women and 4 juveniles have been released from the Pademba Road and the Freetown Female prisons after they had been convicted by a Freetown magistrate court for loitering and jailed for six months. They include a pregnant woman who gave birth behind bars and a 16-year-old girl who was concerned she might miss out on her school-leaving exams starting shortly. According to a press release from AdvocAid, the civil society organisation that campaigned for their release, several of the detainees were injured, allegedly by the police.

Six new Commissioners of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have taken up office in Abuja, Nigeria. They include Khady Ramatu Sacco of Sierra Leone who becomes the Commissioner of Administration and Finance. Mrs Sacco is the former Director of Finance and Budget at the Bank of Sierra Leone.
The new commissioners emerged following a recruitment exercise which has now been validated by the ECOWAS Council of Ministers at an extraordinary meeting, according to an ECOWAS press release.

A 2-week-long investigation into how unsuspecting mobile phone and internet users of Airtel have been swindled of their credits has revealed that the mobile phone company was aware of the practice but did nothing to stop it.
On 30 January, 2012 Politico took up the issue of deliberately deducting units from phones and internet modems for no service rendered with the company’s Rawdon Street Office in central Freetown and found out from its sales and customer care units that they were aware of the act but “it was a technology related misnomer.”

By Tanu Jalloh
1 February 2012

Key Note Address by His Excellency the President
Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma
Sierra Leone Conference on Development and Transformation

The journey of the next fifty years of independence has begun; and we are gathered here today to map out how we are going to make it better than the journey we made during the last fifty years. This Conference is a moment for solidifying our collective promise to make this country better than we inherited it; and to deliver a country to our grandchildren that is worthy of their admiration, respect, and honorable remembrance of us.

By Umaru Fofana