WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-09 Time: 18:00:01 Posted By: News Poster
By With John Momoh
Freetown – The resumption of the railway for the transport of iron ore from its mining site to the sea-port is not only an important achievement, but one out of the many challenges facing the All People’s Congress (APC) party regime of President Ernest Bai Koroma.
Some policy makers within the APC Government are in fact toying with the possibility of the regime, whose policies are focused on the Agenda for Change for poverty reduction, re-introducing the railway transport system that was phased out by the past APC regime of President Siaka Stevens. Others opine that the resumption of the defunct Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board (SLPMB) or its equivalent can also not be ruled out.
Certainly President Koroma appears sensitive to some of the shortcomings of the past APC regime. During the launching of the first phase of the Kenema to Koindu Road project which stops at Pendembu few months ago, the President responded to the people’s appeals for the creation of marketing facilities for their crops, by indication that his government has plans to resume the SLPMB, a parastatal that used to be the power-house for providing incentives to farmers in the country such as providing ware-house and market facilities to farmers.
The impressive ceremony at the Queen Elizabeth II Quay for the commissioning of a locomotive railway cargo of the African Minerals AML (SL) Limited for the transport of iron ore to Europe over the weekend, can therefore be regarded as another of the many starting points in the efforts of the APC Government to boost this country’s ailing economy, an economy that had been plagued by corruption perpetrated by various past regimes. The new leash of life and dynamism to the economy as a result of the massive investments of the AML and the London Mining companies are among important steps aimed at raising the living standards of the average Sierra Leonean.
The stagnated economy that had made this country to be classed among the least developed in the world by the annual UNDP Human Development Index Report and for which every effort is being made to achieve the global challenge of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aims at reducing poverty by half by the year 2015.
Essentially past APC regimes have always been justifying why they folded the railway, which they felt was not making profit at the time. Government’s imposition of the 51% shares for government on mining companies that caused the Sierra Leone Development Company (DELCO) to fold up is also a controversial issue for which certain critics are castigating the past APC Government, while others consider it a laudable gesture. But in the viewpoint of the APC regime at that time these were two important acts of state that were in the interest of this nation.
What critics have been wondering about is how could a railway that transports people and goods across the country; from Freetown to Pendenbu in the Eastern Province and from Makeni in the Northern Province to Bauya in the Southern Province, be of economic liability to this country? Should it also have been that the 51% ultimatum posed by Government would have been motivated by internal economic doldrums, the global winds of economic impact or the mining companies’ lack of commitment to their respective corporate responsibilities in their mining lease areas?
The fact is that given the enormous responsibilities of government and the existing political instabilities of the era, the Sierra Leone Government was expecting the mining companies to do more in terms of adding their respective quota to the development of the country. The social responsibility commitments of the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST) Ltd with diamond mining lease in the Kono District and at Tongo-Field in part of Kenema District, a private mining company with the lion’s share of mining operations in the country, was for example doing little for the people of Kono and Tongo-Field in terms of the provision of scholarships, road construction and providing health-care delivery. The road from Yengema, the SLST headquarters to Koidu town was only tarred with government intervention. Despite many years of profit-making DELCO never undertook to construct the Lunsar to Makeni and Lunsar to Port Loko roads!
This is why President Koroma deserves praise for venturing into some of the crucial aspects of the nation’s development initiatives that his predecessors have been silence over. This is a big shame to those APC stalwarts who felt that all the socio-economic and political policies of past APC regimes must remain intact and untouchable as some of the actions and pronouncements of the President tend to be delinking from the tracks laid down by even the party’s founding fathers. Certain APC stalwarts have in fact wasted no time by stating it would serve well in the interest of government’s agenda for change if the railway is resumed throughout the length and breadth of this country to salvage the country’s chronic transportation problems.
Agriculture and food security is also a priority on the agenda of the Government. In fact during the launching of the first phase of the construction work on the Kenema to Koindu road few months ago, President Koroma did not mince his words when he indicated that his government has plans to revive the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board (SLPMB), one of the victims of the corrupt practices of past regimes. Certainly many economists view that the continued closure of the SLPMB was not only politically motivated but counter-productive to efforts to boost the economy and to provide more job opportunities for Sierra Leoneans in the agricultural sector. Of course the Smallholder Commercialization Programme (SCP) meant to empower rural farmers, for which government has recently secured a colossal grant of about US$42 million is just one of the many challenges in front of Government in their efforts to raise the living standards of every Sierra Leonean. There is of course the need for government to fight corruption without any traces of compromise and leniency.
Original date published: 8 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009090813.html?viewall=1