Last week we welcomed four new VSO ICS volunteers to the team, Charlotte Langridge and Dhakshi Suriar from the UK and Kadiatu Kargbo and Emmanuel K Kamanda from Sierra Leone. We are looking forward to working with them on existing projects and them using their own initiatives to carry on the hard work of the last VSO ICS volunteers Salifu Kanu (Sierra Leone) and Sarah Ludbrook (UK) in raising awareness of women and children’s rights in local schools and communities.
In their first week the new team were taken by WOFHRAD co- founder Emilia Kamara to meet Alhaji Stevens, at the Makeni Magistrate’s Court and sit in on some of the cases. This experience was a particularly interesting one for our UK volunteers as, in Sierra Leone, women are not permitted to wear trousers in the Magistrate’s Court and it is customary for them to cover their hair. One particular case was where two men embezzled the sum of Le1 billion worth of goods from one of the richest construction companies in Makeni. The team hope to monitor court cases in the future particularly those related to women and gender based violence.
The volunteers also attended a validation meeting at Makeni City Hall to present the final Constraints Analysis Report of the Millennium Challenge Cooperation Unit (MCCU), an agency of the US government. After prayers and welcomes by the Chief Administrator, Paramount Chief and Professor Strasser-King, the MCCU Coordinator presented an overview of the report. It looks at areas seen as major barriers to foreign investment leading economic growth and development.
The report outlines conditions on which Sierra Leone must make progress in order to continue receiving funding from the MCCU). The areas to be improved upon include; Civil Liberties, Rule of Law, Freedom of Information, Protection of Environment, Access to Credit for small businesses. More specifically, the areas in which Sierra Leone must make progress are infrastructure, water and sanitation, and most importantly tackling corruption.
One of the initiatives to improve Water and Sanitation is The Distribution Authority and Generation Authority have been setup to regulate and improve electricity supply. The hope is to increase the supply of electricity from 3-4 areas of the country to 9-11 areas.There is also an initiative to increase access to safe water in order to improve sanitation in the western areas of the country. It is estimated the water and sanitation project will cost around US$150m, the largest to ever take part in Sierra Leone.
The issue most concerning to the MCCU is corruption levels. Sierra Leone failed the level of corruption set as acceptable by the MCCU and tested by external agencies such asTransparency International (TI) and Freedom House in 2013. Steps taken to address this issue area so far include:
- The establishment of the Freedom of Information Act encouraging businesses to publish their financial statements, aimed at increasing transparency.
- The “Pay No Bribe Campaign”, set up to raise awareness and combat of corruption within the government and official offices.
Next week our volunteers are hoping to attend two training sessions; one on‘Training of Trainers’ session led by WOFHRAD’s main donor ActionAid and an Accountability Session led by ENCISS.This will prepare our volunteers for the many sessions they are planning to facilitate in the coming weeks.
Written by Charlotte Langridge and Edited by Emmanual K Kamanda, Kadiatu Kargbo and Dhakshi Suriar, VSO ICS volunteers.
Leave a Reply