By Esther Wright
This medium was made to understand that during a date to be pronounced later on, the General Manager of the Sierra Leone Ports Authority (SLPA) Dr. Abdulai Fofana and his Deputy Askia Yakuba Bio in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport and Aviation will soon commission four new ferries. The move, it was also learnt, is geared towards ameliorating the travelling constraints people have to go through in moving between the capital city Freetown and the airport town of Lungi across the River Rokel estuary and other communities along the country’s coast.
Of significant concern is the lack of a convenient and safe means of travelling from Lungi Airport to mainland Freetown to those travelling in and out of the country via Lungi airport.
With the ferries servicing the Freetown-Tagrin route needing haulage and proper servicing , as they have become death traps and unreliable, and with an increase in passenger volume coupled with the Government’s expansion of the airport to cater for at least one million travelers in the coming years, it becomes very much important for new ferries to be procured.
Since the 1980s when funding for the Management of the Government owned ferry service became apparently hapless and the authorities decided to subcontract the running of the service to the private sector, not much investment has gone into improving the quality of the ferries themselves – of which there are only two.
Frequent breakdowns, corruption, lack of spare parts, and the high incidence of the ferries going aground or drifting into the Atlantic Ocean, have made passengers very wary about their safety. Hence, the astute, dynamic and forward looking leadership of SLPA wants to make these life-threatening challenges attached to sea travelling a thing of the past.
The much needed and long awaited ferry service, providing a fast, safe and professional ferry service between the airport and the capital, Freetown is set to be enhanced by Government which will not only benefit and help in improving as well as easing travelling but will also positively impact the operations of airlines using the country’s air space.
