Government to lift HANCI ban soon
Reports have intimated to Sierra Express that the government has seen the need to lift the temporal ban it recently placed on the activities of the NGO, Help A Needy Child International (HANCI). A State House source said government has realised that the NGO is working and complementing efforts of the government in caring and supporting children of Sierra Leone, the majority of them being orphans and destitute. (Photo: Executive Director of HANCI, Dr. Roland F Kargbo)
The same source explained the understanding that lots of persons who were bitter and aggressive in Sierra Leone during the course of the eleven year civil war were persons with bitter minds and experiences as a result of support and good parental care which they lacked from their homes.
The source said the government does not want to see itself derailing efforts of children’s rights serving agencies, though they are equally tasked to regulate and monitor the genuine operations of all NGOs and INGOs working within the shores of Sierra Leone.
It could be recalled that the former Executive Director of HANCI, Dr. Roland F. Kargbo was emotional when he was addressing a press conference in HANCI’s headquarters in Freetown two weeks ago on the said ban the government of Sierra Leone placed over the NGO’s operations.
Two weeks to now, Dr. Kargbo is still emotional and indignant over the fact that the government was lured into perceiving that the NGO, which he established some twenty years ago with the sole intent of helping suffering children in the country, would be dubbed as a criminal enterprise.
The children’s human rights visionary, Dr. Kargbo said the government acted on impulse to have slammed a ban on the NGO in full disregard of the fact that the NGO is tied to supporting a substantial figure of 14,692 beneficiaries who are equally affected by the ban.
The ban means the NGO should not operate or execute any mandatory function detailed under its licenses of operation for which the babies, children, families receiving business support, schools and teachers employed by the NGO and those under teacher training scholarships are henceforth being slashed of such support.
This mismatch came following rows of pleas by certain alleged parents who for the past fifteen years have been claiming that the NGO sold their children in the United States of America. The NGO had responded severally equal to the claims that they enhanced a joint adoption scheme with MAPPS for orphaned children during the wrath of the civil war in Sierra Leone and did not sell them. The NGO’s point of view is that they may have made a few mistakes due to the fact that it was during the war that the adoption process was enhanced, but they were conscious of the fact that the adoptions were a legal process, and they did follow all the necessary procedures, have the children’s social history, did the registration in the open, read the adoption document in English and interpreted it in Krio, Temne, Limba and Loko and received the giving party’s consent and then sealed the adoption processes.
Dr. Kargbo said the number target of beneficiaries was initially minimal, little knowing that the NGO would attract such a huge number of beneficiaries as it stands today. All of these were done in good faith and without ulterior motives, Dr. Kargbo said. “I was almost killed during the war in the process of saving the lives of those 29 children in question”, he stated. “My children in Germany called and told me, please come to the nearest African country, we’ll send you an air ticket so that you can fly abroad and save yourself death from the rebel zone, I told them back that I was okay in the rebel zone and that I would not abandon those children until I ensured that I handed them their future. These children were in need of parental care and support – they were lacking it and we felt we should complement if not supplement their lost love and parental support”, he revealed. He said the NGO created projects such as Comic Relief, Street Children of Sierra Leone (SCoSL), and Hope and Homes for Children in Sierra Leone (HHC) and worked in partnership with UNICEF, World Hope International and other agencies that entrust support to the course of children.
Dr. R F Kargbo said even if he is not recognised for such the humane service that he has been offering, he should not be vilified by a government that so professes love for her citizenry including children who many perceive to be tomorrow’s leaders. “Some of those children are now attending their universities in the United States of America, a chance that would have been slim for them to have in Sierra Leone”, he stated.
Over the years HANCI has been engaging in activities that are gearing towards ameliorating lives of children, cutting the various creeds and strata in Sierra Leone. One of their most recent activities includes the street children headcount survey, which they co-organised with the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs and the street child support project as partners. HANCI’s operational areas include, Makeni, Lunsar, Magburaka, Kono, Bumbuna, Masimera, Kamakwie, Tambaka, Bo, Freetown, and Mattru.
Towards this in-set the Deputy Minister of Information and Communication, Hon. Sheka Tarawallie embarked in a fact finding mission to the United States of America and discovered that the children were not sold and that they are enjoying their liberty rights like any other person is doing with his his/hers. He also established that most of the children under the adoption scheme are acquiring university education and are living in luxury for which deporting them in the name of serving the alleged parents quests would reverse their future course in life.
Upon establishing this we understand that the government is now caught in the lexis of order to reverse its hasty decision to have placed a ban on the operations of the NGO which has already affected their funding and activities. Certain quarters are now ashamed of pronouncing the word. It could be recalled that the ban was placed in favour of pleasing the noise causing alleged parents who over the past fifteen years have been parading in carried emotions that the NGO sold their children when in fact it was them who willingly gave their children for adoption. Workers of the NGO are now seeking that the honourable thing the government should do is to uplift the ban and exonerate the NGO.
Certain sections in our investigations came clear to establish that political gimmicks were employed by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, to dent Dr. Kargbo’s political aspiration as he is contesting against one Hassan Barrie who he favours. Over aboard SEM’s investigations reveal that it was the people’s clarion call that Dr. Kargbo came to answer, since he is not doing much around after his retirement as Executive Director of HANCI some five years ago.
Dr. Kargbo has a track record of immense contribution in Constituency 036 and the constituents’ views are much saying that he should represent them in the well of Parliament to continue in his good visionary character. Dr. Kargbo built schools, taught, served as principal in the Gbendebu Secondary School, and ensured in the past that each person is enlightened. His adult literacy sessions established to educate people of ages is still in progress and over and aboard his flourishing scholarships awarded to scholars in that part of the country are a thing that set him high for an elective position.
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