By Yankuba Kai- Samba
Failed Sierra Leone politicians. Stop lying to your people that you can’t do anything about the hardship in your country because even in UK there are hardship.
The unemployment rate in the United Kingdom came in at 3.7 percent in November 2022 to January 2023, largely unchanged compared with the previous three-month period and slightly below market consensus of 3.8 percent. It remained also 0.3 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels.
People in work have the purchasing power and this is the bench mark to fuelling the economy of any country.
In Mobai, my maternal home town, there are no employment in this chiefdom headquarter. So even if you open a business, it will collapse unless you run it as a charity.
There are two corner shops in Mobai run by fullas. I became a friend to this family. I visit the shop to buy eggs, bread and sardine regularly. It’s my only protein I could get during my two months stay in Mobai.
The price of one egg in this shop was 2 leones at first. Then it went up to three Leones, then it shoots up to 5 Leones.
She stopped selling eggs because people were no longer able to buy it because prices have gone up and up.
Recently I became aware that the business has collapsed, it’s no longer viable as business was not selling.
I have been in contact with this family,since I returned to UK. So I have chipped in. She calls me, me bra law.
Next experience, I did my regular day walk in the township of Mobai. One day, I saw a woman who was cooking soup in a big pot.
I stopped and asked her,what are you doing with that big pot of soup.
I sell casava with it. How much do you sell for a plate. It’s 1Leone. I told her that the price was too little and that she could increase it to 3 Leones. She responded that if she increase on that price, no one will buy it.
Now can you see the point I made earlier that no economy will develop when the vast majority of the country’s population are jobless.
The rate of unemployment opportunities and availabilities through which people can earn money is an undisputed fact in an enabling economy.
Employment will bring in income and gives the purchasing power to the people. Joblessness and lack of them, will cause great harm to the socio-economic prosperity of the citizens.
In most of the rural communities, like Mobai, some are able to eat through subsistence farming,but this is short and seasonal.
There is no state payment to the unemployed, which is in near 80 percent.
So how can we compare prices going up in UK to prices going up in my birth country Sierra Leone.
There were more jobs available in UK during the pandemic than prepandemic.
Politicians in Sierra Leone should stop lying, for electioneering purposes, on the prevailing economic hardship to their citizens, by making an utterly nonsensical stories and idiotic comparison,clothed in deceit, of price raises, hardship and its impacts on their hapless population, with that of the people in the 6th largest economy in the world,UK.
No leader will tell the people who elected him to power, can say to them,he could not do anything to mitigate or bring prices down, which is indeed the central purpose of government intervening to control inflation.
If Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, who is a PPE graduate, were to tell the British people, he cannot do anything about the high cost of living in UK. I swear to God anabe and to my imaginary Pemahu tani, he will be out of office within hours.
In UK, there are systems and structures which have been put in place for over half a century to ensure that the welfare of the citizens, especially those who will be seriously affected by changes in economic climate or emergency, such as the jobless, the old and disabled, women, children and at people at the lower end of the economy are looked after.
Any country where there is no means of levelling up,without adherence to the rule of law and infested with corrosive injustices and corruption that country is doomed. No way a people in such society will see happiness and daylight. We need the authority of truth and integrity in Sierra Leone politics.
