News

By Prince J Musa in Kenema      

The authorities in the eastern Kenema District have resolved to quarantine nine people as punishment for violating Covid-19 movement restrictions.

The men and women were accused of violating the existing inter-district travel restriction imposed by the government as part of efforts to prevent transmission of the virus. They were arrested by police on Monday shortly after their arrival in Kenema, sources said.

While the police say the men and women came from Freetown, the accused denied this.

By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay

The Iron Ore miner, SL Mining Limited, has expressed concern over the arrest of five of its expatriate workers in Sierra Leone. The company said the five workers were arrested last Wednesday May 13^th by the Sierra Leone Police on suspicion of inciting a riot that happened in Lunsar on April 30^th.

The five included two British nationals, one Indian, one South African and a dual citizen of Sierra Leone and United States.

By Francis H. Murray

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has arrested four staff of the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) over allegations of corruption. The arrest comes almost a week after media reports exposed a major scandal around the implementation of the government’s social safety net program.

The four suspects were part of a team that were distributing money to people with disability in the northern district of Bombali ahead of the last nationwide lockdown. NaCSA announced the suspension of the officials over the weekend.

Some of you will notice in this edition that we have republished some of our stories and articles from our Monday 18 May edition.

We had to do this after realizing that only a few copies of that edition reached our target audience.

Feedback from the market and our general readership indicated that some unscrupulous individual or group of individuals went out of their way to ensure that the edition didn’t reach the public for reasons best known to them.

By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay and Francis H. Murray

Residents of Kissy Dockyard are on edge after the manufacturing company, G. Shankerdas and Sons Limited was hit by what is suspected to be a wave of Covid-19 cases.

At least two people are said to have fallen ill, one of whom is reported to have dead. As a consequence, the company has been forced to halt its operations and its entire premise has been quarantined.

Efforts to get officials of either the company or the Covid-19 Response Team to confirm the exact situation proved futile.

By Francis H. Murray

Sierra Leone’s youngest telecommunications company, QCell, is again at the receiving end of a very fierce competition, after its two main rivals shut their doors on it, leaving its customers unable to make cross network calls.

QCell raised the alarm on Friday after Orange and Africell, the two leading operators in the country, blocked all calls to and from its network.

By Prince J Musa in Kenema     

Police in Kenema have arrested ten people in connection with a dispute over a farm land.

Serious violence erupted on Friday between residents of Mano Kotihun and Vaahun villages in the Nongowa chiefdom.

The Police spokesman in the district, Sergeant Brima James Musa, told Politico that they had made arrests following the incidents that led to destruction of plants and riotous behavior.