Sierra Leone Telegraph: 27 August 2020:
Minister of Local Government and Rural Development – Tamba Lamina, last Thursday led a conducted tour of the newly constructed Freetown City Council Administrative Complex, after three years of construction initiated by the former APC government.
The massive building which graces Freetown’s skyline is fifteen-storey tall and has been built to house the entire Freetown City Council’s administrative functions and staff.
The construction of the building started in October 2017 after former president Koroma turned the sods; and is expected to be completed in November 2020.
The Mayor of the Freetown City Council Mrs Yvonne Aki Sawyerr and the Korean engineers led the tour of the building by minister Lamina, starting from the ground floor right up to the fifteenth.
The new City Hall Complex consists of conference rooms, 461 seater conference hall for multifunctional activities with the latest technology, an underground power station consisting of two 800KVA Generators, and a car parking lot to cater for over 100 vehicles – all at a total cost of $48,730,000.
Many in Sierra Leone are asking whether this is good longterm investment for a city of over two million people – most of whom do not have access to clean drinking water, nor reliable supply of electricty; poor sanitation, and massive youth unemployment,
This is now the highest building fitted with latest modern retrofit technology. If management and maintenance of this facility is entirely left in the hands of the FCC, it is a serious concern. We are definitely going to lose it’s efficacy in the not too distant future.The council lacks the capacity in a no maintenance culture jurisdiction like Sierra Leone. The first trouble is going to be shortage of water supply in the building.
Development is continuity and we hope and pray that the new government will help to maintain the structure together with the council management. God bless Sierra Leone.
Freetown City Council is virtually bankrupt. It is struggling to meet its legal obligations. How is it going to afford the estimimated $200.000 annual costs of maintaining this high maintenance building. FCC Councillors today held a press conference at which they expressed their frustrations about the negative impact of non-collection of property rates on the provision of services to their wards. They mentioned the state of the cemeteries, the cancellation of scheduled projects in their wards, the backlog of FCC staff salaries and the challenges with implementing planned sanitation enforcement in the city. The game don big – this is the New Direction.
OMG papa Bio is the right man currently for this country, I don’t care what, you are a good man and God will always protect and bless you. It is all about anything for the benefit of the motherland. Thank you Mr. President.
This is a positive development for our nation. The only reason we are currently discussing about this building is because the then defeated APC party refused to respect the will of the voters of Sierra Leone who elected late President Tejan Kabba, by inciting and sponsoring Johnny Paul Koroma to reverse our democracy. He invited the rebels in Freetown which resulted in the destruction of the then modern City Hall where we used to attend concerts and other social events during the 80’s. Now, there is another threat and incitement coming from the Adebayor People’s Congress (APC) party to once again overthrow our elected leader , Commander In Chief of the Armed Force and Fountain Of Honor Retired Brigadier,President,Dr. Julius Maada Bio..
Fortunately this time around, a patriotic Freetownian and Sierra Leonean within the APC (Dr. Sylvia Blyden) has decided to sacrifice her life to save the people of Freetown and our country from the repeat of the destruction of POSSIBLY this magnificent building by speaking TRUTH to lifetime chairman and leader of the destructive APC party. Let’s continue to pray that PEACE AND STABILITY will continue to reign because that’s the only atmosphere that development will be possible.
Finally with the $48 million (which should have been spent on something else if there was peace) but already spent on this building, as compared to the $50 million grant received from the World Bank project to “transform Freetown”, I hope and pray that our powerful Mayor Mrs. Yvonne Aki Sawyerr will continue to collaborate with the New Direction government in transforming Freetown.
It’s all development of the city. It is about time we transform our city and country. When you go to other countries across Africa, then you know that we still behind. The only thing is maintenance, as we lack maintenance qualities in Sierra Leone. Please keep it clean at all times.
However one looks at it, it has added value to the skyline of Freetown. Some of the posts are laced with partisan sentiments, with some of the farce coming from the usual comedians. DEVELOPMENT is not about the present generation selfishly filling their pockets with loads of money, it is about making adequate provisions for the next generation. And it does not matter whether the project was initiated by APC or SLPP. The fact is each and everyone glancing at this building, would be proud to be a Sierra Leonean. It also signifies that priorities were being taken on board – Freetown City Council is an important institution. At least, it is better than SUVs, which only a few can benefit from in the short term. Money well spent.
The problem of Sierra Leone is lack of maintenance.
Man, this is far worthy than the million dollar Prado jeeps that this government threw away. The city council is an institution and needs the investment to sustain its growth and development. The conference center and car park could generate enough revenue to contribute to not only the continued maintenance of the building but in repaying the loan. Only the mayor’s car and few other urgent operation vehicles should be allowed to park there. Charging at least twenty five thousand per vehicle a day can go a long way. Unfortunately for Salone, even section managers carry a car and driver.
That is a whopping amount that is even more than the cost of building London City Hall – a futuristic piece of architecture designed by Norman Forster, a world-famous Architect.
It is now accepted among building professionals that to analyse a business case of erecting any building, a whole-life costing concept is a must. One must look beyond the capital cost of designing and constructing any project and embrace additional costs in the operation and maintenance of the completed building. The latter could be at least half the cost of the capital costs. In the case of this Freetown City Council edifice, the Mayor should be budgeting to spend $24 million in the building’s operation and maintenance during its lifespan, often estimated at 50 years. Beyond that 50 years, those costs will then balloon if the building is not to become a carcass.
Another note to add is that, it is best practice, to tender seperately for the Designers, Constructors and Facilities Managers of such buildings to save costs, improve quality and prevent fraud.
One thing was amiss in the posted article. How was the project funded?
The Freetown City Council Complex is an added value to the skyline of Freetown. I enjoyed the view the most while crossing the estuary from Aberdeen to Lungi on sea coach transport taxi. I am worried about the maintenance of it after several years of operations. The maintenance culture in Sierra Leone is very poor, and this is evident on buildings that have been constructed few years ago. I want to recommend to the editors of our Wikipedia page to upload some pictures of the Freetown central business district skyline.
The Freetown City Council ultra modern administrative building project is very welcome. It is part of the long pending eleven years civil war disaster reconstruction projects that our country badly needed to complete, after the old City Council office was destroyed during the war. The municipal government administration was basically squeezed into that rat-hole of an office as a desperate measure by the then City Council committee of management, led by its dynamic Chairman, the late Mrs. Florence Dillsworth and her deputy, the late Victor Chukuma Johnson.
It was alright then, but it is now stressful and disgraceful. Yes, we need more pipeborne water, hospitals and jobs, but we don’t even have a proper office for the very institute that caters for those facilities and opportunities, which is pathetic. Obviously, the infrastructural project for the Freetown municipal administrative office is a major priority that is quite in place, not from a partisan point, but rather, from a nationalistic point of view. And again, if we don’t have such modern buildings that house our institutions and beautify our city, how can we properly administer it, how can we like and miss our city, how can we ever practice the culture of maintenance? Lastly, Ronda is right on track, make no mistake about it.
It is great news for the city of Freetown to see the completion of the new home to the city Council. Price tag 48 million dollars. I am not a killjoy, the building is there and should be celebrated and we need more of these buildings dotting our city. Next time, the government should commission housing projects to help generations of families that live in PAN BODIES. It is of course with great sadness, that we in fact as citizens of this great nation can celebrate the completion of this building. In other words, it goes to show how little we expect from this corrupt government and how easily we are satisfied with gimmicks projects. They treat us like children.
This building is like a Christmas day present, wrapped under the Christmas tree. So they expect us to jump for joy. With all our resources, this sort of development should be the norm not the exception. Iam sure the 48 million dollars is just the loose change from the stolen sovereign wealth. Surely one would have thought before this building project was commissioned, that there were other urgent competing needs that need city officials attention and that residents of Freetown would have liked to be considered top of the list.
Like how to prevent the recurring flooding in the city, helping residents to rebuild their homes, clear away the drainage and sewage system, build two or three recycling plants for the rubbish heaps you see in some parts of our great city…I could go on, and on but you got the jist. I think if a consultation were conducted before the commissioning of this building, I know where families that are suffering from the nightmare of flooding would have voted for. May God bless Sierra Leone.
Personally I welcome the project because it is part of development. It is up to Sierra leoneans to take good care of the building.
They erect these buildings in the city without an efficient plan to maintain them. I give it 7 years maximum and it will start to look like the rest of the eroded mini skyscrapers that are already there. Two to three more of those and the west will start to compare SaLone to Rwanda and call it development lol.
This is one of those vanity projects that our former APC government initiated at the expense of providing much needed services such as affordable housing, sustainable electricity and pipe borne water for the many dwellers of our congested city of Freetown. It reminds me of Youyi building another monument that was built by the Chinese government to commemorate the Godfather of the APC party, Siaka Stevens. Today, the government can not even afford to paint the building, let alone provide much needed running water for flushing the toilets.
I hope my readers don’t take me for one that is against infrastructural development, or dotting our city with sky scrappers. But the maintenance of such buildings in a country with no maintenance culture is mind boggling. Our people continue to travel to Ghana and India for medical concerns and yet our government is willing to spend millions of Dollars on a building to house a few corrupt politicians. What if this money was spent to build a state of the art hospital in both the Western and Eastern rural areas, wouldn’t our country be better off? These misplaced priorities is why our country is lagging behind in improving the lives of our people.
Mr Noorudin Kaikai, I beg to differ on your assertion that this is a vanity programme. Our City hall before it was burnt down was beautiful. The Kabba Government did not do anything about it even though the building was gutted down by the rebels during his reign in power. The Koroma Government likewise was not going to do anything until Ambassador Omrie Golley was appointed as the country’s ambassador to Korea. The Koreans paid 70% of the money and our government was to pay the 30%. I can assure you that that 30% was paid by this current government. So if your assertion is that it is a waste of money, then this current government is complicit in that waste of money.
If managed well, the building should be able to recoup its maintenance fees. It is that culture of ‘I don’t care how I use public property’ that we have to get rid of. For example people do electric fittings in public buildings as if it is their private building just for their temporary comfort. Some of the time, those fittings have resulted in fire incidents. Even government quarters assigned to people should not be redecorated, tampered with or painted with a different colour of paint without the expressed approval of the authorities responsible. But in Sierra Leone people paint the glass panes of their government office as if it was theirs.
Some of the space in this building can be rented out to private company or businesses to generate extra revenue. The car park should be paid for on a monthly basis even by Council workers and members of the public who would like to park their cars in the building. If members of the public want to use the toilet, they should pay a small fee collected to pay for the water, cleaners and toilet tissues. This way, the toilets can be maintained and kept clean at all times.
If we can pay for all of these services in the west that has money, I don’t see reason why we should not do the same back home, so that we can have decent buildings and clean environments.
Thanks to Ambassador Golley for helping restore the dignity of the City Council. Thanks to President Koroma for supporting him make the negotiation and accepting his proposal. Thanks to President Bio for paying the balance for this project to be completed and lastly thanks to Madam Mayor for supervising that completion of the project. This is not waste of money. Rome was not built in a day. I hope other Ambassadors can bring similar projects to our beloved Sierra Leone. Development should not be a partisan business. It should be a pride to all and sundry as long as it is devoid of corruption.
Depends how how you look at things in terms of viability and sustainability;And clearly if your opinions are not tainted by bias and partisan prejudices, surely it will be easier for you to see that such of long term investment was done in good faith, in the interest of our beloved nation and purposefully with a sound sense of judgement. It is now up to our innovative resourceful Mayor to use this opportunity to create jobs and rescue the city of Freetown from sinking into the depths of deeply troubled financial waters.
Our nation definitely need more of such modernized infrastructural development. The whopping $48 million price tag is however puzzling!!
I hope I read and understood correctly that Korean engineers constructed the new city council complex – not Chinese. Did the Koreans bring their workforce from Korea? My hunch is that the majority of the workers were Sierra Leoneans. The level of unemployment must have taken a little knock.
The allusion is that had the contract been awarded to a Chinese company most of the workers would have been shipped in from China to increase the Chinese population in the country, keep Sierra Leoneans unemployed and increase our indebtedness to China, which most likely would have meant surrendering our sovereignty to it like Zambia has. China is on a colonisation drive across Africa. Their tactic is through economic entrapment as opposed to Europeans who used the Bible and the gun.
A word of praise to the Koroma administration for initiating the project even if it is doubtful whether they carried out any cost-benefit analysis given the economic hardship in the nation. With the ultra-ambitious Mayor Aki Sawyer at the elm, there should be no doubt that the complex will maintain its glitter for now. Who knows whether it won’t be turned to a scrap heap once she leaves the scene ?
I should have loved to see Nissan Motor Company producing the “Nissan BO” model right in Bo City Southern Sierra Leone. One of my sources, the information yet to be confirmed, informed me, that the former APC Government of President Ernest Bai Koroma had such a very good plan for the people of Bo District, but was sabotaged by some of our southern brothers in the coalition government. Can you imagine the thousands of jobs that would have been created for our brothers and sisters in Bo City and beyond?
Anyway, the new City Council Building is welcome although not a priority in my view. I hope the Mayor will use the underground parking for drivers in central Freetown. By doing so, the City Council will earn revenue to meet some of its development goals. To encourage drivers to use the parking area, strict parking rules must be established in the Freetown central area with heavy fines if drivers don’t comply.
Finally, could President Bio follow this information about Nissan Motor company building an assembly plant for Bo Nissan model? If he does not, then my candidate will provide that assembly plant for the people of Bo. PERIOD! God bless Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the APC and Nissan Motor company. I am following the information for the facts and will give an update.
Sahr, i won’t doubt the ‘sabotage’ theory at all. And only APC regimes have made any formidable impact in both the eastern and southern regions of Salone. The Dodo dam, the Bo-Kenema power project, etc.