BUS WAHALA
Public service buses as distinct from podapodas and kekes are in active service once more after the notorious days of BalogunKoroma. How long the service will continue without interruption is the million dollar question. In developed countries citizens depend more on public transportation than private ones including taxes some of which are available for hiring. Time was when there were bus services in Freetown and the provinces. The buses ran on schedule and commuters queued to board them. We have not really developed in the real sense of the word. The senseless and premature phasing out of the Sierra Leone railway exacerbated the transportation problem.
Fast forward, the A.P.C had been attempting to provide quality service in vain. They were more interested in what they could get out of the deals than in satisfying public demands.
The new buses are custom made with provision for the disabled. Youths are advised to give seats to the disabled, aged and nursing mothers in the buses which make provisions for standing. And the buses should be kept clean and free from cutting of seats with razor blades and sticking of chewing gums on seats.
Unlike podapodas the buses do not stop at half-ways. They have designated bus stops and should be available within minutes and commuters should exercise patience.
The present batch is of 50 buses out of 200 expected. The country will soon be nearly completely bussed.
School Feeding
Children from hungry homes had negative effect on the voting in the last elections of 2023. It had a knock on effect on hungry parents. A good percentage of children had been eating once a day while others had no food for a whole day. Therefore the government has encouraged more children to go to school.
The cooks and teachers sometimes have undue bites on the food for the children depriving them of their full entitlement. As a result some of the condiments are taken to their homes. The children need balanced diets for good health. Integrity in needed here to be enforced by school heads and not the A.C.C. In any case there should be strict monitoring.
Government should be commended for feeding more schools with the assistance of the World Food Program.
Environmental Dancer
We have been worried that our country in unfortunately among the three most vulnerable to climate change in a world of over about 193 countries. Is that not enough to take this climate business as a matter of urgency? They have not been specific which is more worrying. Could it be an earthquake, landslide, hurricane or tsunami or something else? Could the scientists put their finger on any one of these undesirable phenomena?
The prospects of any of these events taking place are so horrendous that some patriotic citizens had no alternative but to band themselves together and to ask the government to do something. This is in spite of the fact that the Environment Protection Agency had been raised to the status of a Ministry.
There is used of firewood for cooking for over 70 percent of citizens which is almost unavoidable and charcoal for cooking. Gas for cooking is not affordable by the common people and as a result they depend on firewood and therefore they keep on depleting the forests without tree planting.
In spite of the dangerous situation of the country in terms o climate change, logging goes on regardless and government prefers revenue to devastation it would appear.
Waterloo Post Office Closed
Waterloo village is no longer a village in the real sense of the word. Even when it was a village in colonial days a post office existed with a post master.
Now since the last election won by the SLPP the Post Master General has deemed it fit that the people don’t need a post office. But he has seen to it that it is now renovated and has become a white elephant.
The editor of Expo Times would do well to get one of his reporters to find out reasons from the Post Master General and publish the story to relieve the people of Waterloo of their deprivation.
