By Mabinty M. Kamara
The government of Sierra Leone, through the Mudslide Inter-Agencies Committee, has vowed to demolish a house being constructed in the Motormeh-Regent Yellow Zone.
After the 2017 mudslide, the Mortemeh-Regent area, where the incident occurred, was divided into two main zones: Red, which according to experts is an emergency area, and Yellow, which is considered a potential emergency area. All the houses within the Red Zone were demolished and the owners compensated.
The government said a total of Le9billion was spent on dozens people as compensation, in addition to food and non-food items.
Officials said most of the houses in the area did not have any legal document.
“If we had followed strictly by documentation, we would not have spent that much because 99perceent of people in that place do not have documents,” said Sandy.
However, according to the committee, a lot of people including a former government minister, whose houses were swept off by the mudslide, were not compensated. The unnamed former minister is widely thought to be Mohamed Bangura, former Minister of Information and Communication. A stored building which was destroyed at Motormeh was reported to belong to him. But Sandy said they could only compensate for buildings that they could see and be able to access their value.
The house under contention is owned by Prince Sinno Allieu, a victim of the 2017 mudslide. Mr Allieu was one of 88 people who received compensation for the demolition of his original house in the Red Zone. As a member of the committee that made the payments, he received Le1.5billion, according to the committee
According to the authorities, he went ahead to construct the house in the Yellow Zone.
Minister of Lands and Country Planning, Dr. Denis Sandy, told a joint press conference with the Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs on Friday that Alleu, who was the Co-chairman of the committee, flouted the rules by erecting the new building.
“He was the co-chair of the committee. So impliedly, he was supposed to be a moral guarantor and an arbitrator between the affected people and the government. So if government is having challenges with the people in relation to their compensations, he should be an intermediary. But to our dismay, he has become our offender in the process,” said Dr Memunatu Pratt, Minister of Tourism and Cultural affairs.
According to the ministers, Allieu even extracted most of the materials from his demolished house, including steel doors, tiles, fittings and zinc, to construct the new house.
Motormeh was handed over to the Ministry of Tourism by the National Protected Area Authority (NPAA) for it to build a National Memorial Park there. That followed a pronouncement by President Julius Maada Bio during the first memorial service organized for in honor of the mudslide victims that no new building should be erected in the Yellow Zone, in line with an advice by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).
Officials said because of lack of enough resources at the time, UNOPS advised that existing structures within the Yellow Zone could remain but that no new building could be allowed to be erected.
Sandy said because at that time the government didn’t have sufficient money to pay people in that area, it had an understanding with them that they would be there temporally.
“All those who have flouted the President’s order [by] building a house there, we will demolish their houses,” he vowed, stressing that the entire Freetown peninsula is at risk of disaster.
“We don’t want people to die so we will take drastic actions.”
Prior to Friday’s press conference, the committee members visited the area as part of a fact finding mission, after receiving intelligence about the construction work at the Yellow Zone. It followed widespread concerns over the potential of another mudslide after a crack was reported in a nearby mountain in the area. They said they were confronted by thugs who they believe were hired by Allieu.
Tourism Minister Pratt said the young men made abusive comments about the president and the ministers.
“In fact they were on alcohol right in front of us. They confronted us with the intention to assault us, but we took the necessary decision that we are going to move to the back and get the police to enforce the law by marking the house X. So we have taken this decision to send a loud message across to others who may think that if you build a house in the Yellow Zone you will go scot-free,” said Ms Pratt.
© 2019 Politico Online
