President Koroma wants new houses for ordinary citizens for 50th Independence Anniversary

President Ernest Bai Koroma yesterday 3^rd March 2010 called on the Sierra Leone Institute of Architects, the Institute of Engineers, and local contractors to take up the challenge of using local materials to build affordable houses for people in our towns and villages.

Speaking to a cross-section of local architects, engineers, local businessmen and representatives of financial institutions at State House in Freetown, President Koroma re-echoed his initial appeal to the technicians, saying that he had convened the meeting to remind them of their responsibilities in nation-building.

“When I took up office, I specifically appealed to architects to design our towns and villages so as to help minimize unemployment rate and simultaneously show something that is Sierra Leonean.” In response to that call, the President said, the architects initially presented a very impressive design to him: “Unfortunately, they are still fine-tuning the diagram.”

The objective, according to President Koroma, was to address Sierra Leone’s housing problems, urging the architects and engineers to design decent houses with the aim of using “our local materials at affordable costs and to make it possible for the ordinary farmer to have an affordable, not sophisticated, but decent house. We must work with the local councils to come up with designs for the average citizen. If we don’t take that approach now, we could find ourselves in a difficult situation as it is now happening in Freetown”.  

Sierra Leone, President Koroma continued, will celebrate its fiftieth Independence anniversary in 2011, “and we as a country should have something to show the world, something ingenious, something local… The houses and huts that our people have been using before Independence are still what they are living in today…”   

The President recalled visiting the Taima resort of local businessman Sam King (who was also present at the meeting)  last week and was not only impressed by the beauty and ingenuity but also by the fact that it was virtually totally constructed out of local materials at a relatively cheap cost. 

The President said there was a need to emulate and replicate this example at least in all district headquarter towns in the country, in order to boost socio-economic activities and the movement of people. “In Sierra Leone, people hardly travel for excursion purposes, people don’t know their country. Some only travel when they have workshops or seminars, but facilities of this type will enhance traveling. It will be a commercially viable venture,” the President said, even as he believed that financial institutions like banks and NASSIT could be in a position to fund the project.

On the fiftieth Independence celebrations, the Head of State noted that, “My plans are not to have an elaborate party, but to show that we as a country can do things on our own, things that will make people know that we are making a difference.”

The President said government cannot on its own do it, but the country can do it through the consortium of architects, engineers, contractors, local businessmen, and financial institutions. He however appealed to them not to look at the venture from a political point of view, but from a commercial one.

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