Epileptic Electricity: A Threat to Prosperity
The frequent blackout that now characterizes our capital city, Freetown, and the provincial cities of Bo and Kenema, is clearly serving as a threat to President Koroma’s much sung Agenda for Prosperity as uninterrupted and reliable power supply serves as the bedrock on which prosperity and development rest.
No sane investor would risk his money in a country suffering from a spasmodic power supply. Industrialization heavily depends on reliable and constant electricity, the absence of which impedes industrial growth and economic development. So, the epileptic electricity that now plagues our cities has become a cause for the concern of this writer.
Since electricity is a highly political service, I am of the view that the rampant blackout bares the potential to render fruitless President Koroma’s development efforts and make his government unpopular considering the numerical strength of people who depend on electricity for their survival. Therefore, the president must move heaven and earth to ensure that the power problem is addressed immediately. Delaying is always dangerous.
Providing electricity, for especially Freetown, is one of the feathers in the cap of President Koroma, but the frequent blackouts in the city nowadays tend to pluck out that feather and make the president fly without wings. One of the main reasons why the then ruling, now opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party woefully lost the 2007 elections in Freetown was its failure to provide reliable electricity for Freetown, the ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) must not make a similar blunder.
Whatever problems Bumbuna Hydro Dam may be encountering is not beyond solution; so the government must do everything possible to restore uninterrupted electricity in Freetown, Bo. and Kenema, if it is serious about the ‘Agenda for Prosperity.’
By Joseph Milton Lebbie
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