Thursday December 31, 2004
Anxiety is slowly sweeping through some Sierra Leonean circles as some of the nation’s citizens may have been caught up in the colossal tidal wave disaster in Asia that has now claimed 135, 000 lives.
According to our reporter, Olu Faulkner, there are strong rumours in the capital, Freetown, that Sierra Leone had students and citizens in affected countries like Thailand , Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka and they were unaccounted for as anxious families have not been contacted by them since the disaster struck last week.
The government has not made any announcement to the effect that there were Sierra Leonean students or citizens in the countries devastated by the Tsunami , but since the Civil war broke out in 1990, Sierra Leoneans are dispersed all over the world and in a massive disaster of this nature it cannot be ruled out that our country was affected. It is certain that Sierra Leoneans live in these countries.What is still unconfirmed , though, is whether some of them perished in the disaster.
Sierra Leoneans who worked as security guards and office workers were killed in New York during the attacks on the World Trade Centre . According to the then Minister of Information, Dr. Cecil Blake, some of the victims of the terrorist attacks were also traders selling goods under the foyer of the Twin Towers that collapsed that fateful day, killing 3, 000 people.
COCORIOKO is calling on readers who know about the fate of any Sierra Leonean to contact this newspaper so that families could be informed . The SLPP government is also urged to make a public announcement about the rumours spreading in the capital to still the minds of the people.
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