Sierra Leone News Today

IMF grants USD 15 million debt relief to Sierra Leone to help fight COVID-19

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced that Sierra Leone is among a group of 25 poorest countries in the world to receive IMF loan repayment suspension for the next 6 months in order to enable these countries to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. This decision by the IMF comes amid calls for over USD 100 billion of debt owed by African countries to be wiped out. In 2020 alone Sierra Leone should have payback over EUR 30 million to the IMF and this debt relief is to help the government boost the country’s health system with Personal Protective Equipments for doctors and nurses. 

GOSL and EU sign EUR 60 million development program

The Government of Sierra Leone and the European Union has signed a EUR 60 million (SLL 630 billion) ‘Jobs and Growth Development Program’ to provide the much-needed boost for human capital centered, sustainable development in these hard times as youths are faced with difficulties to find a job or start a business, also there is no access to finance or training and most of the roads in the rural areas are bad which makes living in those areas challenging. 

ACC launches COVID-19 Response Transparency Taskforce 

On Friday the 17 April 2020 the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) in a press release informed the public that it has established and launched the COVID-19 Response Transparency Taskforce, charged with the primary responsibility to ensure and instill integrity, accountability, and transparency in the utilization and management of funds related to COVID-19 activities. The commission further calls on all Local and International Non-Governmental Organizations to publicize all money, pledges or donations received on behalf of the people of Sierra Leone for COVID-19 containment, as suspected acts of corrupt practices in the country’s response program will be investigated as a matter of priority and urgency. 

President Bio’s security guard test positive for COVID19

Sierra Leone’s President His Excellency Julius Maada Bio in an address to the nation has confirmed to the public that 1 of his security guards had been tested positive of the COVID-19. He said the guard was in quarantine and eventually test positive for the virus but no member of his family has shown any signs and symptoms of the disease. The spokesman of the president has confirmed that henceforth the President will be working from home whiles he goes into a 14-day self-isolation.  

Amid COVID-19 Blind School suffers severe water crisis 

Mr. Thomas Alieu, Founder and Proprietor of the Educational Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ECBVI), over the weekend, register his frustration over the severe water crisis the school is faced with. He said amid the present call for constant hand washing to prevent the transmission of the COVID-19, domestic staffs have encountered some constraints in upholding this measure because of the ongoing water crisis in the school and that the only source of water the school has is polluted with human feces, which they also used for domestic purposes including cooking and laundering.