News

By Mustapha Sesay

The Freetown City Council has disclosed plans to increase fees for burials in the municipality. Officials said the high cost of maintaining cemeteries demanded that alternative revenue must be sought.

Residents will now be required to pay Le100,000, up from Le25,000 per grave before burying their dead representing a 300% increase.

Foday Fofana, a former BBC correspondent in Guinea and Sierra Leone died on Monday in Freetown after a short illness.

The 57-year-old was laid to rest late on Tuesday evening an occasion graced by senior members of the media fraternity including the SLAJ President, Kelvin Lewis who said he was taught a thing or two by the veteran journalist.

Also present were veteran  journalist Chris to Johnson himself a former BBC reporter and Isaac Massaquoi who describes his late colleague as "a giant of a journalist".

By Kemo Cham

The West African Ebola epidemic is no longer an international public health emergency, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared on Tuesday.

The UN health agency said the viral disease outbreak which wrecked Sierra Leone and its neighbors Liberia and Guinea no longer constituted a public health emergency of international concern as the first leg of the original transmission had come to an end.

By Mustapha Kamara Jnr

In a bid to complement the effort of the government of Sierra Leone, Mercury International, through its charitable foundation, has provided scholarships for over one thousand pupils and students from different schools and tertiary institutions across the country.

This was recently disclosed by Samir Hassanyeh, CEO of Mercury International. He told a press conference that the grants that were been given to students and pupils who had applied in 2014 were a continuation of a process that the company started the since 2007.

By Mustapha Sesay

The Freetown City Council (FCC) has disclosed that it is owed over Le11billion in tax arrears.

The Council is threatening to take drastic action against property owners within the municipality who are refusing to pay property tax.

By Hassan Ibrahim Conteh

Advocacy Network (KAN) on Tuesday commenced two-day leadership training for youths and child activists in the Western Area.

The training, being held at the conference hall of the child protection organization Don Bosco Fambul, in Freetown, is geared towards building confidence in public speaking and providing advocacy skills among children and youths in the country. The participants will be trained on various skills on how to develop annual work plans, budget and public etiquette.

By Septimus Senessie in Kono

Burnt-out houses are still visible in Koidu, the headquarter town of the diamond-rich Kono District in, east of the country.

Observers, researchers and academics have said that the Sierra Leone civil war was fuelled by diamonds, hence the term ‘Blood Diamond’, which informed the Hollywood blockbuster of the same name. The title refers to blood diamonds, which were diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies across the world.