Africa 24 news
Despite it’s said government of Sierra Leone had spent huge monies to bring home some forty-nine buses to ease urban mobility in our ever-challenging transport system, official budget-talk on the vehicles’ purchase lacks sincerity, according to views of many ordinary Sierra Leoneans.
“The last time government said each boss cost about a million dollar; the other day another different amount was announced on radio.”
“So we don’t know exactly where we are in this bus matter; how much they [gov’t] bought them is what they don’t want to tell us,” says Abu Kamara, a resident at Fourah Bay Road in Freetown.
It looks like, he went on, and we the citizens are going to suffer the pinch of paying the higher cost on tickets onboarding the new buses.
The buses are bought by the government of Sierra Leone with donor fund provided by World Bank.
But Sierra Leoneans are still “kept in the dark” as to what amount was given to government of Sierra Leone by the World Bank to buy the buses in order to enhance the challenges on urban mobility transport service in the country.
On this lack of transparency and clarity in government’s officials’ explanations on the procurement of the new forty-nine buses, Abu, said as Sierra Leoneans, they demanded a ‘truthful explanation’ on the purchase of the said vehicles.
Sierra Leoneans are demanding clear and sincere official accounts on the buses being bought by the government.
To address Africa’s urban transport service problem, Sierra Leone is not the only country that has been helped by the World Bank, Senegal, in 2017, had also implemented what it referred to as Dakar Bus Transit Pilot (BRT).
Through World Bank Group International Finance Cooperation, urban mobility constraints among Senegalese was fairly addressed by the government.
About 1.7 million Senegalese were provided with jobs under the Dakar Bus Transit Pilot. Road works or road construction, expansion of feeder roads, drainage construction, expansion of intersections, and training and recruitment of road traffic officers were conducted by the government as part of the DBTP’s project implementation.
Because it is only when roads are expanded to enable a smooth vehicular flow, Senegal government recognized the need to firstly fulfill the expansion of some parts of Dakar’s roads and similarly opening up the drainages.
The Senegalese’s bus pilot project saw many buses provided for the city and other parts in Senegal.
And so many Senegalese were employed and the economy flourished within the shortest period of time as government still generates, since then, stream of revenues from ticket bus sales.
And tickets costs are designed by the Senegalese government to be sold to passengers at reasonable costs.
In Sierra Leone, World Bank funded bus ticket prices are tagged higher and government of Sierra Leone has not yet thought it wise to reverse its decision on the NLe 10 bus fare per passenger, something the passengers are grumbling a lot now.