By: Ibrahim J. Conteh
Like most West African cities, Freetown is plagued with unplanned and unregulated building structures, residential housing in disaster-prone areas, and unplanned settlements that intensify deforestation and increase the risk of mudslides and other natural and man-made disasters. Many of the occurrences of disasters ranging from mudslide, flooding in slum settlements can be attributed largely to the encroachment in water passage areas in the quest of constructing illegal settlements in venerable areas.
Had succeeding governments been able to address this emerging issues of urban settlement in disaster prone areas within Freetown and its environs the city could have prevented many unnecessary losses of lives and properties. To get there, an essential first step is improving land administration information systems and the location-based risk information for sustainable land-use planning, and
In a bid to address some of problems relating to urban settlement and the inavalibilty of affordable housing facilities, the Minister of Lands and Country Planning, Dr. Turad Senesie has revealed in a Press Conference held at Ministry of Information and Communication Conference room that Government this time round would prioritize the Construction of Affordable Housing facilities throughout the country with particular focus on Freetown and it surroundings. He acknowledges the huge task that his ministry faces regards land administration and management and its allocation.
He emphasized that providing affordable housing and to ensure that there is proper town and city planning has been his topmost priorities shortly after assuming office, this he said for decades, as a nation we have not been able to effectively and effectively achieved, adding that succeeding governments have primarily laid their focus on land allocation especially for Western Area and it environs with little or no planning towards affordable housing for low income and middle income class. He stresses that, this time around there has to be a change in getting this job done, Stating that as the presiding head of that Ministry, he would lobby with government and its partners in making sure that Affordable Housing as it top most Priority within the operations of his Ministry. “Internally, I intend to separating the Directorate of Housing and Country Planning in into two separate Directorate”, he highlighted that the Directorate of Country planning among other key roles and responsibilities would be laid to develop or review town and country planning Act to control, that would initiate a holistic approach to regulate towns and urban planning, and that the Directorate of Housing would work with partners to build affordable housing around the country for low and middle income earners , envision the modernization of towns and cities to replace derelict and shanty communities. Encourage large scale production of local building materials, work with the Sierra Leone Housing cooperation to improve on service delivery, facility access to credit for building and mortgages of low and middle income Incomes earners would be key among its other mandate and responsibilities.
He underscored the prevailing reality that the Western Area only account for about 1% of the total land available in Sierra Leone, yet due to scarcity in the supply of land, the rush for land has increased, thus inviting state and non-state actors into the sales of piece of land to multiples buyers with multiple documentations, and this he said had led to series of conflict over land ownership in communities. Dr. Senesie stated “such anomalies and other related crimes with land allocation and ownership will be addressed shortly as the Ministry is going to pursue digitalization of the entire systems using a robust and appropriate technology”,
He ended by stating that, this as a nation we can achieve only if put in some amount of sacrifice and demonstrate some level of nationalism.