The Daily IIJ

- Information Minister boasts

Minister of information and communication has said that no government in the political history of Sierra Leone can be equated to the current President Ernest Bai Koroma-led All People’s Congress administration in terms of undertaking reforms.

Alhaji Ibrahim Ben Kargbo was reacting to a charge on his government and its leader by one of the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party leadership contenders, Rtd. Brig. Julius Maada Bio, carried in a front page story of yesterday’s Concord Times newspaper.

“No government had the guts to convert a national radio to a corporation and hand it over to the people; only Ernest Koroma has those guts, only him, because he believes in democracy,” Kargbo said.

According to the information minister, the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill has gone through cabinet without any opposition from members, adding that the FOI bill seeks to provide people access to information. He reiterated that no formal government will undertake such ventures, noting that the kind of freedom and independence the government has given to the Independent Media Commission (IMC) has never been achieved by any government in Sierra Leone’s history.

“As a minister, I have left them to run the commission as they want in a manner no government has ever done; that gives freedom to the IMC. The kind of freedom we have also given the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) cannot be matched by any government. Has the APC ever imprisoned a single journalist since we came to power? No. Have we imprisoned anybody for political reason since we came to power?  No. These are the kind of reforms the president is talking about; even with the inquest we are not going to arrest anybody but just to put the records straight,” Kargbo stressed.

He said government was also working on implementing a bi-lingual programme that will see French being taught in schools alongside English.

On Maada Bio’s criticism that government’s printing of new notes was not the answer “to the severe and worsening hardships the citizens of this country are going through”, Kargbo said the printing of the new notes was to replace the old ones that had been poorly handled by the public.

He said the new notes have been designed in such a way that they will last longer, thereby reducing the tendency of frequently printing new notes. “The new notes are easy to carry. In a modern society the physically challenged, including the blind, must be catered for. Before, it was not easy for the blind to identify the different bank notes,” the minister explained.

Mr. Kargbo slammed suggestions that the printing of the new notes was a waste of funds.