News

The Sierra Leone country director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Saffea Senessie has received the Sarlo Foundation Distinguished Humanitarian Service Awards for his “outstanding work” during the recent Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.

The awards were established by the IRC global body in 2001 to honour IRC field workers and are given to those IRC staff whose “extraordinary dedication, sacrifice and achievement in serving the displaced and other victims of oppression and violent conflict have distinguished themselves and the IRC.”

By Mohamed T Massaquoi 

Momoh Kamara was 14 years’ old when the civil war broke out in 1991, east of the country. He had just sat to the Selective Entrance Examination and was waiting for the result when the fighting reached his town of Zimmi in the Zimmi Makpele chiefdom.

“My parents and some other people supporting me were now preparing for my junior secondary school when the war finally interrupted,” Kamara, now 39, and a commercial motor cyclist in Zimmi Makpele, recalls.

By Mustapha Sesay

Ten US Peace Corps Volunteers have arrived in Sierra Leone on Wednesday, marking the return of the US volunteers into the country.

The US Peace Corps mission was scared away by the Ebola outbreak and it temporarily suspended the programme.

In a press statement issued on Wednesday by the Chargé d'Affaires office of the U.S. Mission in Freetown, Laurie Meininger welcomed the ten Peace Corps Volunteers to the country.

By Kemo Cham

Sierra Leone was declared free-of the Ebola virus transmission for the second time last week after 42 days of countdown.

But unlike the first Ebola-free declaration at the end of last year, this time there was less buoyancy in the celebrations on March 17.The Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) and the World Health Organisaion (WHO) used the occasion to warnof a possible resurgence of the virus that has plagued the West Africa region for the last over two years.

By Fasalie Sulaiman Kamara

When the civil war in Sierra Leone was officially declared over in 2002, there was a huge sigh of relief. But the declaration just ended the hostilities; it soon emerged that the country had a fresh burden to deal with - amputees and the war wounded.

“Muslims in Freetown who used to pray on Fridays at the Wilberforce Street central mosque are no stranger to the plight and suffering of amputees in Freetown,” Edward Conteh, am amputee.

By Mohamed T Massaquoi

Residents of the Galliness Perri chiefdom in the southern district headquarter town of Pujehun have expressed dissatisfaction over the manner in which stray cattle continue to destroy their crops.

The aggrieved residents, most of them farmers, said the animals had not only destroyed their crops but had also attacked women. They said they had made several complaints to the chiefdom authorities but that nothing had been done so far to address the situation.

Former Nigerian President, General Olusegun Obasanjo, has castigated fellow African leaders for causing instability and conflict among their people through their failure to manage diversity in their societies.