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Akufo-Addo to send relief items to support Sierra Leone
Ghana government has resolved to support Sierra Leone with relief items to help the people who have been devastated by flooding and mudslide that has left scores of people dead and 600 more missing.
At least 400 lives have been lost and 3,000 people rendered homeless in the disaster that has left part of Freetown in devastation.
The country’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma, has declared seven days of mourning while pleading for “urgent support,” the BBC reported.African countries and their leaders have since the incident not shown much support to Sierra Leone, something that was on Wednesday condemned by Ghana’s Economic Fighters League, a political movement.
The League expressed surprise at African governments for their deafening silence on the disaster, stating “So far, African countries have said nothing let alone sent anything to comfort our fellow Africans in Sierra Leone and to alleviate their suffering.”
But Ghana’s president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Thursday morning tweeted his government was in the process of sending relief items to support the people of Sierra Leone who are struggling in their recovery process. “Government is in the process of sending relief items to Sierra Leone to aid in the recovery process,” Akufo-Addo tweeted
Nana Akufo-Addo said on Tuesday he called his Sierra Leonean counterpart, President Ernest Bai Koroma, to express his condolences and that of Ghanaians to the people of Sierra Leone.
He tweeted: “I called President Ernest Bai Koroma on Tuesday to express my and the condolences of Ghanaians on the tragic loss of lives and property following Monday’s mudslide in Sierra Leone”.
The BBC reported Thursday that dozens of volunteers like Jibrila Sesay are playing a central role in the gruesome clear-up operation after Monday morning’s disaster.
“We have been collecting corpses and pieces of corpses and bringing them to the mortuary. It does not stop,” says Mr Sesay in a break outside the Connaught Hospital mortuary.
The volunteers are shuttled at high speed in police trucks and Red Cross vehicles to and from the devastated Regent area, the BBC reported The operation aims to prevent a health emergency – caused by rotting human remains on the hillside – from compounding the impact of the deadly landslide and floods, the report added.Inside the rundown city centre mortuary, chief pathologist Simeon Owis Koroma is writing his 350th death certificate since Monday.
“There will be more bodies, in smaller numbers in the coming weeks. That’s how it is with disasters in Sierra Leone. But we cope.
We are lucky because we are prepared,” he says, paying tribute to the volunteers like Mr Sesay who were trained in safe burials during the 2014 Ebola epidemic.
Source: 3news
