Africa 24 news
“What will the additional four lanes have got to do with us?” asked a teacher at a public school.
His question follows a growing issue on a Chinese private road construction company, CRSG, and the government of Sierra Leone calling for an increasing price on the tickets paid at tollgates across the country.
Since the country is struggling to keep down the damning inflation on essential food commodities and materials, the Chinese company had said it would increase all tollgate costs on all types of vehicles. CRSG’s plans to increase tollgate price is due to Sierra Leone’s inflation and the dollar-rise ripple effect on the Chinese firm’s operation.
The decision had sent many people in a state of anxiety and it was lately announced by the company that the new charges would come into effected on March 1st, this year.
China Railway Seventh Group (CRSG) had quoted a contractual document expressing that when the exchange rates double in the country, they CRSG is left with no option but to increase the prices on ticket sales on vehicles en routing the three tollgates ( Masiaka, Songo, Jui) in north-west of Sierra Leone.
This was debated in parliament and had been talked about by many Sierra Leoneans who are worrying over the shocking ripple effects the tollgates ticket rises will be having on goods and services in the capital and the provines.
They said if tollgates prices on tickets are added by the Chinese company and later approved by the government as, per agreement, quoted by the Chinese company, these Sierra Leoneans said poor people especially traders, less payable public workers, drivers, will suffer the pinch.
It will mean they argued further, transport costs on goods from the provinces and on people will become higher as drivers wouldn’t have enough choices but to add up the transport fares.
However, as the heated debate on the tollgate possible additional cost continues, parliament of Sierra Leone had disapproved its implementation, calling for a review on the agreement signed between CRSG and the previous government of ex-president Ernest Bai Koroma, All People’s Congress (APC).
The former government was understood to have signed a twenty-five year period of privatization of the tollgate with monies be collected by CRSG.
The agreement demanded then that a four-lane be constructed over forty miles drive starting from Masiaka to Wellington in Freetown.
But CRSG is accused by the public not to have finished the construction of many road facilities as agreed by the contract between APC and CRSG.
On the latest moves of plans to re-construct a four-lane between Masiaka town and Freetown, a prominent teacher in a public school had kicked out the idea, saying it is wrongly in place:
“That is never a good-thought of thing to do by this wicked government. It is better they buy rice for the people; at a time now when a buy of rice is going Le 1million.”