Africa 24 news feature-By Hassan I. Conteh

The whole community where soldiers conduct their shooting tests during field training activities is seriously being overwhelmed by unplanned buildings around built by people.

“If you take a walk or stroll far beyond the range area at the Benguema Barracks in Waterloo, you will be amazed to see  elegant dwellings being mounted up beneath the mountain range sites at Grassfied and Benguema Barracks area,” a man had informed Africa 24 journalist at a local tea shop about the worrying situation at the range site.

The range where the army do their normal firing tests during special trainings has been further encroached by people who have been putting up some houses at communities surrounding it.

Grassfied, Benguema and York Road communities are the ones close to the Range  which is just few metres away from the Benguema Barracks which is itself now a big civilian community.

Our Africa 24 journalist last made a short tour there to have a look out at the range site.

He was told by a man he spoke to in an exclusive interview that soldiers used to patrol around the Range area in the past in order to keep off all encroachers from unnecessarily putting up houses around the prohibited area owned by the Army of Sierra Leone where the Benguema Military Training Center is built.

From the journalist’s observation, it appears like many plots of lands close to the missile firing range are gradually being bought over day by day by people who wish to build houses.

This is evidenced by the kinds of very nice, elegant, affluent houses already being built there.

The Range, apart from it being a military missile testing ground, it is an ideal, frostry environment which used to home some many birds, animals, reptiles, and other kinds of species which are important to humans and to the soil.

Twenty years ago, top on the mountains above the range, this place used to have natural grown up food- trees such as bananas, oranges  mangoes, lemons.

And the Range Swampy Water is very clean, pure and sweet for drinking purposes which serve many people around in those communities.

“We used to go there around 2002 to pick ripe bananas, but the bananas could sometimes be eaten by monkeys and other animals alike.”

“Now the place is left bare as people cut down trees from there and sticks to either make out charcoals or sell to house builders,” Pastor Bernard, a resident at York Road who has lived in the community for over thirty years, shares his experience with our journalist.

The trees and the lush forest at the range and on above mountain chain help trap the sun rays to the ground which later evaporate and form into dark cloud rains.

That makes rains to usually fall in Western Area Rural District in Waterloo so plentiful more than in other regions during the wet season in Sierra Leone.

It is good that the government of Sierra Leone speeds up action to protect this mountainous range site that lies between the Benguema Barracks and the hills at York Road community in Waterloo.