By Amin Kef Sesay
The fear of the opposition political parties during the passing into law of the President’s State of Emergency was well-founded in a lot of respect. One; intrinsically, the invoking of the emergency implies that certain fundamental human rights have been curtailed.
It is in this regard that we the ordinary citizens want to draw the attention of His Excellency as Commander in Chief and the Inspector General of Police as the custodian of the law that we are not happy with the way certain Police Officers have constituted themselves into gangs going about in the evening harassing and attacking people going about their normal businesses, especially petty traders making their living.
We are not under a curfew. People’s right to move about freely, once they are in a lawful, orderly mode should still be guaranteed.
We firmly believe that, not in spite of the emergency, the fundamental right of us citizens to fend for ourselves, in a country where over 70 percent are unemployed or under-employed, should not be violated or treaded upon.
Another issue which is not under the direct purview of Mr. President but the SLRSA that we the ordinary citizens want addressed once and for all is the recklessness of the drivers of today – many of them suspected to be hardcore drug addicts do over speed recklessly causing unnecessary accidents.
Two such accidents due to reckless driving took place on Saturday morning at both ends of the Orugu Bridge. Investigations revealed that there a lot of vehicles that are defective but are licensed by SLRSA to ply our roads.
We believe that ,SLRSA, as the state agency responsible for protecting lives and properties on our roads, rigid vehicle examination of all vehicles to determine their road worthiness is required before both license and insurance are issued to vehicles.
Directly related to the above is the way and manner SLRSA has been registering commercial vehicles that convey passengers – namely Poda-Podas and big buses that are imported from Europe without any windows and the air conditions not working.
Every day we are crammed into these hot stifling buses like sardines in a tin, simply because we have very little alternative, with the drivers and owners making enormous profits from our suffering.
What is very painful and frustrating is that these so-called traffic police officers and traffic wardens who we have repeatedly reported as not working for we the people but for them and their bosses who post them profit, see us suffering miserably inside these cages and have never been seen taking any action on our behalf to tell the drivers and their apprentices to reduce the number of passengers they carry and to provide their buses with ventilation or stop running them.
With regards the above, Mr. President, we the poor ordinary every day commuters were very happy and heaved heavy sighs of relief when the New Direction promised us that in addition to the buses that were inherited from the Agenda for Prosperity Government, 200 buses would be brought in to reduce our exploitation and discomfort suffered at the hands of commercial transport owners.
Another issue Mr. President not also within your direct purview but very troubling and annoying to us quite beside the daily headache and stress it causes us is the way and manner businesses and traders in this country indiscriminately price their goods and services without any regard for the poverty in the country.
What we have discovered is that all the businesses and traders buy very cheap shoddy goods and services and charge us exorbitantly for them in the belief that Sierra Leone is a free market economy. Another thing that bothers us that we believe needs addressing is that of state enterprises like EDSA, Guma, Sierratel charging us for services that they do not provide, or if they do, do so erratically.
Meanwhile Mr. President, we would like to inform you that the entire nation is very pleased with the robust proactive stance you and the New Direction Government have taken to ensure that the corona virus does not enter into our country and disgrace and impoverish us like its cousin Ebola did to us.
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