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The New People Newspaper Online Sierra Leone News and Alternative Perspectives on News, Events, and Policies in Sierra Leone .
Bombshell! APC is Spending $532,763 on Refurbishing Ernest Koroma’s Presidential Lodge as Sierra Leoneans Struggle to Pay More than Le100,000 for a Bag of Rice
12.31.2007
At a time when most Sierra Leonean families are working harder than normal to even feed their families and pay the increased cost of goods and education in Sierra Leone, President Ernest Bai Koroma is wasting away the nation’s resources on his lavish lifestyle.
Although President Ernest Koroma has claimed that he would live a quiet lifestyle because he is the people’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma’s recent actions demonstrate that, like his statement about declaring his assets in public, he is again telling the Sierra Leonean people a big lie. The president is determined to live in luxury at taxpayer’s expenses while the poor people suffer to even get food to eat.
One senior official (name withheld for security reasons) has told this press that he has warned President Ernest Bai Koroma that the APC will soon become unpopular if he does not take a firm position on dealing with his own lavish lifestyle and the lavish lifestyle of some of his ministers (especially some of the deputy ministers). The official noted that he had been part of the group determining which of the state properties the president can adopt as his official residence.
Kabassa Lodge was first suggested by the committee. Building contractors from a Senegalese and Nigerian company looked at the property – which was once the home of erstwhile military strongman, Valentine Strasser. The contractors determined that the property was not structurally sound and that part of the foundation had started cracking. Renovating the property would therefore involve not only replacing the foundation, but also restructuring the whole lodge and the helipad. Besides, they noted, the area is not very secure for the president as a lot of civilians have since constructed homes in the immediate vicinity of the lodge. The committee therefore decided that renovating Kabassa Lodge would be way too expensive, with the final building not being secure enough for the president.
The second option was therefore identified as the presidential lodge at Hill Station which had hitherto been occupied by President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. The APC has therefore called for a TOTAL RENOVATION of the Presidential lodge.
First of all, the contract has been awarded to a Lebanese owned company which is the only construction company with a branch in Makeni. The company is MODCON. The majority shareholder is a known APC financier, and like the provisional electricity plan, the contract will never been made public by the President and his cabal who has been shouting from the rooftops about transparency and a curb on lavish government spending. However, it has been revealed that the final figure for the contract is 532,763 minus the cost of local labour (what we call workmanship) and local materials such as sand, gravel, and granite rocks. The president’s office is free to publish the original contract to disprove this document received through MODCON sources in Freetown.
All furniture and furnishings are being replaced. Also, all internal and external fixtures (windows, doors, toilets, sinks, bathtubs, tiles and ceilings) are being replaced. The fixtures have been imported into the country and cleared duty-free although the contractor is not the government of Sierra Leone. The swimming pool and tennis court are being redone with the swimming pool widened. At the behest of President Ernest Bai Koroma, who is an avid squash enthusiast, a squash court is also being built, complete with a viewing pavilion and picnic areas as well as a lounge sunshine bar. An area is being built for a special heliport as the president is anticipating the purchase of a helicopter to fly him and top dignitaries directly from his residence to inaccessible parts of the country. Elite electronic security measures are also being installed and the lodge will be protected permanently by a well-armed force led by Idriss “Leatherboot” Kamara who, and the men under his command, are no longer members of the statutory military forces in the country. That the president has recruited and armed a private militia with sophisticated weapons is blatantly against the constitution of this country. The kitchen area of the refurbished lodge will be made up of all new fittings and equipment including new dish-washers, stoves, cookers, microwave ovens, coffee makers, lounge bar etc.
As always, The New People would like to ask the APC and its president the tough questions. With the cost of living becoming unbearable everyday and people suffering in this country, should President Koroma spend half a million dollars in renovating a house that is already one of the most luxurious in the entire country?
So why was the work not given to the Ministry of Works? Why was the PMDC Minister of Works, Mr. John Saad, himself an engineer, not consulted about the refurbishment and the contract? Was this another slap in the face of the PMDC partners? If the Ministry of Works had done the job, would that not have minimized the cost of this unnecessary renovation to just the cost of the materials and other supplies needed to complete the job?
Again, how was the contract awarded? Was it by open and public tender as all government contracts must be awarded? Why was it awarded to another Lebanese business man who has close ties to the APC?
Given the country’s limited resources and with the country at the bottom of the Human Development Index, is this latest APC spending spree (in addition to the fleet of Jeeps and the flashy lifestyle of ministers like Logus Koroma), A RESPONSIBLE USE OF SIERRA LEONE’S FINANCIAL RESOURCES?