‘We Are Not Witch Hunting FCC’ - Parliamentary Committee Chairman By Alhaji Mansaray Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Local Government, Hon. Abu Bakarr Koroma, has maintained that they are not in any way witch-hunting the Freetown City Council but only performing their oversight functions. Speaking at a meeting held recently between the Committee and the Freetown City Council at their Wallace Jonson Street headquarters, Hon Abubakarr Koroma highlighted that for the government’s Agenda for Prosperity to achieve its goal, all should put hands on deck and work together to ensure the program materializes. He noted that the devolved sectors of the council were not present at the meeting to answer questions relating to their functions. Other members of the parliamentary committee stressed that they need to know the relationship between the council, councilors, staff, and so on. They pointed out that they had gone through the council’s status report and taken note of the constraints it faces. The committee, however, recommended that if the council performed its duties effectively, the parliamentary committee’s oversight responsibility will greatly reduce. The parliamentarians commented, for example, that Freetown municipality is seriously filthy and emphasized on the need to capacitate the city council. Giving an overview of the council’s project, the Acting Chief Administrator, John Amadu Conteh, said they have a good working relationship with council workers and have paid nearly six months salary backlog. “We pay workers regularly,” he reported. Waste management poses a great challenge to the council, he said. Dealing with the city’s sewage is another challenge the council faces, he added. On the issue of clearing Abacha Street off street traders, the acting Mayor said space has been reserved for them at the Sewa Grounds market. He ended by lamenting that the populace has largely misunderstood ‘Operation WID’, which President Koroma initiated in January this year to decongest and make cleaner the streets of Freetown.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 12:47:20 +0000
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