News

By Septimus Senessie in Kono

Handicap International has donated start-up kits to 31 physically challenged and vulnerable trainees after completing a year-long skills-training exercise in various vocations at the Konomusu skills-training centre in Koidu.

The kits include sewing machines, assorted bread baking materials, hair dressing kits, soap-making levers, carpentry, weaving and ceramics-making materials worth millions of leones.

A 30-mile feeder road construction linking 16 villages is underway in Nimikor Chiefdom, Kono District. The road, which starts from Bandafada, close to Motema and runs through to Kpukuya is expected to boost economic and agricultural activities in the chiefdom.

By Fasalie S.Kamara

The National Director of Health Network Sierra Leone has called on government to suspend the mining activities of London Mining Company in the Marampa chiefdom.

By Mustapha Sesay

A report launched in Freetown by the advocacy organisation, Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) reveals that about 500,000 hectares of farmland, estimated at 21.5% of the country’s arable land is current under lease agreement with foreign agribusiness investors through a process campaigners say amounts to “land-grabbing”.

By Tilly Barrie

The Executive Representative of the Secretary General in Sierra Leone (ERSG) has called on women to be included in peace talks as it is a matter of gender equality and human rights.

Jens Toyberg-Frandzen was addressing women groups at Hill Valley Hotel in Freetown during this year’s UN Open Day 2013 celebration with the theme “Women in Peace Building”.

He said the UN had a whole pillar on gender and the launch of the report would give an insight into where the UN was on gender issues as well as to advance it.

By Septimus Senessie in Kono

World Vision Austria, a Christian charitable child focused nongovernment organization, through their Kono office, has embarked on a free medical treatment of hundreds of sick people at the Koidu referral hospital.

They have also done the same for their two sponsored communities of Fiama and Soa chiefdoms in the eastern Kono district. The treatment only targeted women and children.