By Hassan I. Conteh
Africa24 news
Culvert otherwise known as Kolbot community is very deprived in many social facilities by the State.
It lacks pure water, regular energy supply, and good houses for people to live in.
Here like Moa Wharf which is close to Sierra Leone’s port, children at Kolbot don’t enjoy enough playing time since corrugated homes clustered around, leaving just squeezed out passages as human access road.
The roads within the slum community are too narrow that a very fat man or woman could find it strenuous to pass through.
This is so because since ‘panbodi’ , zinc homes are built by people all over to make a living, open spaces or playgrounds are not left by the community people.
Ten years ago, this place used to be very crowded as black market business deals flourish among youth in Kolbot community. It was due to the existence of the cement and rice factories at Kanikay community, which is above Kolbot.
But now those factories and business activities and dark deals have disappeared. The offshoots of other kinds of factories which brought with them some stricter rules and protracted employment conditions have resulted to a new twist of events – life for the youth at Kolbot and Kanikay is on a barbwire scenario. The hard up among people is the order of the day. Electricity supply and access to pure drinking water still represent a growing challenge.
A young man who runs a game show known as play station, Abubakarr, spoke to Africa24 about the current poor condition of youth in the area.
“The youth want jobs; they want to work, if you talk to anyone here now he will tell you that he wants to get somewhere that he could make money.”
When we took a short stroll around the Water Quay area at Kanikay, we noticed that there are massive new factories being put now in that area. The old cement warehouses have disappeared. The place around the wharf area at Kolbot very close to Kanikay used to attract lots of people, women and adult men, young men. These people either live there or do business as they sell second-hand items or stolen properties from the warehouses.
But the houses which used to be there have been cleared of and the evacuees are not employed by the State.
It now poses a sorrowful scenario for those who live at Kolbot but far off Kanikay area where some stealing tactics were used to be conducted by some hard-core criminals.
Those who don’t steal at all have suffered a blanket rule by getting them off the area.
The problem of unemployment at Kolbot also similarly affects a very big slum in Freetown which is in the east – Moa wharf.
Moa wharf is just a stone throw to the shipping port of Sierra Leone. The port is widely known as Water Quay or Queen Elizabeth II port.
Many young guys who were driving for some clearing and forwarding agencies at Water Quay have been made jobless as they were not recruited again by a French Company, Bollore Transport & Logistics company, which now runs the Freetown Terminal, the port.
“My brother, there are lots of us who are driving for private NGOs now. It is difficult now to get a driving job at Water Quay,” says a truck driver who is a resident at Moa wharf.
To encourage community people especially young people who’re unemployed, Bollore needs to strengthen its ties with the communities in which its business operates as part of its community relations.
It is true that Bollore has helped Moa wharf community in particular in providing education scholarships to children and by rehabilitating a water source (well) and by constructing a community centre at Moa wharf.
But the French private company needs to do more than the traditional media have claimed that Bollore has done a lot for the people of Moa wharf.
The company’s corporate social responsibility activities in this community in which it operates have not directly impacted the lives of the people.
And Bollore’s CSR programs in the two communities are fraught with negative side-talks among the people for whom the company works hard to establish and maintain a goodwill, mutal and beneficial relationship with as a fulfillment of its corporate social responsibity.