By Afrca24 team
According to reliable sources, there is still more work to be done in the market storey building at Sewa Grounds in the central of the capital Freetown.
The multi-purpose and complex market structure is on at finishing stages on its construction.
It comprises seven units and it has a total of 170 toilets.
An official at the Sierra Leone Traders Council (SLTC) gives us statistics on the completed areas and non-completed areas of the market complex.
The first and second unit consists of 1,700 market stalls with 40 toilets: 20 for men and 20 for women and all have been completed.
At unit three, there are 82 warehouses meant for perishable goods, but only 65% of the work therein has been completed, remaining 35%.
Unit four is categorized in the infrastructure unit. Here, there is a fence, drainage, CCTV camera, water supply, a multi-parking space for 100 cars, but only 55% of the work in this unit has been completed, remaining 45%. Unit five is the Support General Services: it will compose of a Police Post, Fire Force Post, Nursery Mother House, Central Control Camera Clinic, Facility for managers, FCC post (Freetown City Council) and NASSIT post, but only 50 % of the work in this division has just been completed so far. Unit six comprises 172 ”lockable shops” which are self-contained and a restaurant and finally Unit seven which will have 277 medium lockable-scale-shops, but only 70% of the work has been completed in this unit.
The much work left on the market suffices it to predict that NASSIT will not finish this year and hand over the storey building to prospective traders who will be paying likely on a ‘lease basis’ for the market stalls and shops.
The Sewa Grounds multi-purpose market is located on Rawdon Street or back off Victoria Park in Freetown.
National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) has been putting up the storey building at the epicenter of the capital Freetown for years now.
The Sewa Grounds market construction was said to have started in 2016, taking it about eight years period of work-start and work-stop, owing to likely central government’s slow action to review the previous government’s project about the construction of the said market.
Since the capital’s Central Business District is always overcrowded with petty traders and business people, the previous government led by ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma, thought it wise to build a market within the CBD in order to ”decongest” the streets.
But, after the demise of President Koroma’s All People Congress (APC) government at the time, the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) regime currently being headed by retired Brigadier Julius Maada Bio had put a standstill on the construction work on the market at Sewa Grounds. No reason was given by the Bio-led administration for several delays to continue Sewa Grounds market construction.
However, work was only allowed to go on in the later years of President Bio’s first-five year term in office.
The several ”unexplainable delays” by the government on this project has honestly caused state income losses of some millions of Leones.
If, the Sewa Grounds market had opened long ago, the government of Sierra Leone would have saved more cash by now.
But, the more delay to see it open for business means more revenue loss.
Like ex-President Koroma’s administration, Sierra Leone’s current President Julius Maada Bio and his government are wishing to see street trading is completely stopped.
President Bio is running for a second five-year term in office and his SLPP’s administration has turned its attention in stopping Street trading at the Abacha Street, the busiest commercial center in Freetown.
SLPP had launched series of crackdowns on Abacha street traders in an attempt to stopping them from doing businesses on the streets, but all did not work.
The government had also given traders an ‘ultimatum’ to abandon Abacha Street, but the September 30 deadline this year has elapsed and government has not acted on the ultimatum yet since its expiration.
The traders and many other Sierra Leoneans say government should have provided business people free up markets before it thought of removing them from Abacha Street and the CBD.
The central government through NASSIT is working towards addressing the issue by speeding the work to finish the Sewa Grounds market complex.
But, there is no clear plan in meeting this target.
Traders’ Council authorities say Sewa Grounds market is too small and it may not be completed and handed over to a minimal number of the traders in Freetown.
And they are concerned that not all of the traders could afford to rent or lease a stall there.
The market stalls and shops are just not enough for the many hundreds and thousands of the petty traders in Freetown.
Some traders who own stalls at Abacha, Wilberforce, Goderich, Sweizy, with some owning small-scale businesses are scattered in many numbers without available statistics of their actual figures.
The CBD is the heartbeat that provides steady income for foreign and local business people in Freetown.
And Abacha Street is the reservoir of survival for many petty traders in the capital and its outskirts.
Considering the huge population in the business sector, SLTC official says, housing these business people and petty traders at a ‘half-street’ in the CBD, is just not an ideal idea.