By Africa 24 team

The perilous Leicester Road has become almost a ‘no-go area’ for bike riders above the foot hills of central capital Freetown.

The cobblestone and narrow path has been further squeezed out as rains constantly washed up the soils left by some Chinese bulldozers.

A Chinese civil engineering company was doing the road to make it motor-able for vehicles and motor cycles and to ease movements of people.

The Chinese firm was contracted by the previous government of ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma to tar the long, hilly road of Leicester Road and other streets in Freetown.

In an exclusive interview with a Chinese road company based at Leicester village on Fourah Bay College soil, some Chinese road construction workers confirmed to journalists then, around 2015, that Leicester road including about fifteen poor roads within the central capital would be tarred as per a special contract between government of Sierra Leone and the Chinese road company.

But, when the Ebola epidemic ravaged Sierra Leone very badly, at the time, the little work started on Leicester road had to stop at once.

The road engineers who were seen marking the road on either footways stopped coming to the community.

Many similar attempts of civil engineers waking up the hilly road, holding an electronic distance meter to do a survey on the road, have been carried out by some black, unidentified men, on the road in Leicester community.

But, the construction of the road had been crumbled up after some Chinese engineers briefly came to the community in the year 2021.

They started working there and stopped afterwards.

They were using an excavator machine to pull up some boulders or rocks, cutting down some palm trees.

At that time residents of Leicester road community became so happy because they had thought their suffering was over.

Their suffering to climb the hill in hot days, and to climb down the slippery path in the rainy season, and the discomforting dust during the dry season, are what they had thought had come to an end, hoping that the road would be built for them.

They smiled as the Chinese excavator, operated by a black guy, was drilling rocks and pulling down palm trees to clear the way for a tarred road.

But, that activity only lasted for about two weeks in 2021.

Since then, no one in the community knew what had caused the Chinese contractors to stop coming to the ground.

Neither has a government authority had said anything to the community people on what had stalled the road work.

The Chinese firm may not be blamed for not finishing the work at Leicester road and to build other roads. It might be a ‘deal did not go’ through to get the work done under the current government of President Julius Maada Bio.

We, however, visited the scene where the work was going on, Monday November 6, 2023.

And we noticed how the road has been badly damaged with unpaved gutter areas widen in holes, due to some ferocious flow of water.

A bike rider, Abubakrr Jalloh, told us his reactions about the poor state of the road.

“The road is very bad now; everyone is complaining the same. That is why we are asking people now to pay up Le 12,000 or 10,000 to come up here from Model junction,” he said.

The distance where Jalloh and other riders are demaning a sum of Le 10,000 was priced at Le 3,000 in the year 2016.

In developing this story, we strive hard to get a reaction from both officials at Sierra Leone Road Authority and officials at the Chinese road company at Leicester village, at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, but we could not get anyone to talk to.