News

By Francis H. Murray

Dr. Steven Velabo Shongwe the WHO Country Representative in Sierra Leone has urged the government and its development partners to strengthen public health and safety measures in a bid to defeat the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ACC North-East Region Office has engaged In-Charges of various peripheral health units across Bombali District at a meeting in Makeni. The ACC Senior Public Education Officer Abdulai Saccoh recognized the "enduring sacrifice” of the health workers in delivery primary health care to inhabitants in remote communities.

President Julius Maada Bio has called on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to “urgently create a special committee to look into the unsolved Yenga matter between the two countries through diplomatic engagement with a view to finding a lasting solution to this long-standing boundary dispute”.

He was addressing the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State a few days after reports appeared on social media that Guinean forces had mounted an incursion and attempted to erect boundary lines in the disputed town.

Sierra Leone will not be using its own money to service its debt owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this year (2021) and next (2022) because it has been taken on by the European Union.

That leaves some $39 million in the hands of government to use in competing priority areas.

The head of the European Union Delegation in Sierra Leone, Tom Vens says his organisation has agreed to take on the servicing of the debt because of the impact of Covid19.

By Francis H. Murray

The body of five-year old Khadija Saccoh has been laid to rest at the Kissy Road cemetery. Her death in June sparked off street protests calling for justice amid allegations that she had been raped before she was killed.

The Hill Station Central Mosque became a pool of tears on Friday 22 January 2021 as hundreds of family members and sympathisers converged to say final prayers for the deceased.

First Lady Fatima Bio and the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Elizabeth Turay, were among the mourners.

Vice President Dr Juldeh Jalloh left for Senegal yesterday for a study tour of how the country has implemented its US Millennium Challenge Cooperation (MCC) projects which it has tremendously benefited.

According to a statement from the Sierra Leone embassy in Dakar, the VP will lead a team of senior cabinet ministers, the Financial Secretary and the Chief Executive Officer of MCC to Sierra Leone.

By Mabinty M. Kamara

Over alarming rates of road accidents across the country, mostly attributed to drunk driving, the Sierra Leone Roads Safety Authority is set to institute the use of breathalysers to test the rate of alcohol contents in drivers.

The figures released by the Roads Safety Authority recorded from January to December 2020 show a total of 2,763 road accidents with 867 deaths (501 men, 334 women and 32 children) and 770 people seriously injured.