By Mohamed Issa
Many concerned citizens who are au-fait with the unfolding scenario at the Ministry of Works, the Government Assets Commission are presently breathing a sigh of relief that Salone is gradually moving in the right direction. The stark reality is that, for the past years, people have either misused government property and to the extent grabbed and converted them into their personal use.
This egocentric behaviour has contributed immensely to the backwardness of the country in diverse ways.
In many instances, the negative attitude of certain unscrupulous individuals has in many instances cost the country a very huge sum of money especially for land when government wants to undertake developmental programmes in certain places because of the unavailability of land which have been grabbed by these individuals. The typical example is Sierra Leoneans where people are currently yearning for return of train transportation to ease their precarious transportation problem but the most unfortunate side of the issue is that most, if not all the remains of railways have been vandalized and some have been converted into private property. And this bad attitude of certain citizens has added more burden to the process of reintroducing the train transportation in the country because of the cost and time consuming exercise. The fact is, whosoever is going to take that venture has to start it all over again. All these are indications that as a nation we lack the initiative of maintenance culture and ability to protect government property. But for Commissioner David Panda Noah of the Government Assets Commission to take that initiative to interface with the Anti-Corruption Commission in their strive to retrieve all government property that have been grabbed by individuals over the years as well as to protect those that are currently in existence is a very laudable venture that every patriotic citizens will like to see. The only issue that many people are concerned about is the continuity of this good venture as well as the dispensation of probity without favour. And government should also deviate from that old habit of abandoning public structure and any other property for long as this will create the leeway to grabbers to exert their nefarious attitude.
In so many instances, government has rented buildings from private individuals with a colossal sum of money to be used as offices. Many concerned citizens have over the years negated this behaviour and have interpreted it as waste of government resources and a fishy deal that usually operates between the owner of the building and the government officials in charge of the deal. And many a time patriotic citizens have always expressed discontent over such deal and have referred to it as detrimental to the nation which need to be changed. They insisted that government renovates old public buildings instead of renting from private individuals at a very expensive cost. Without naming names because the trend is numerous, we however hope that they will change if the government Assets Commission and ACC work in earnest to clampdown on these grabbers heavily to retrieve our national property so that government will have sufficient property to judiciously utilize them for the benefit of the general.