By Hassan Ibrahim Conteh
The Sesay family, at Magazine Cut, prefers a system that allows them to make quick money when selling than to a period when things get tougher for them.
Musa Sesay and his wife, Fatmata Sesay, despite they couldn’t pay fees for their children, admit the hardship is too much for them.
Currently, the government of Sierra Leone pays fees for children and sort out school charges in public exams. But owing to the absence of stricter measures to prevent school authorities from extorting money from parents, some teachers are allegedly collecting money from parents secretly.
“It is better to be asked to pay school fees, when you could sell and have money, than government paying for my children without me getting sales or money to run the home,” Sesay compares.
The New Direction government is paying for primary and secondary education, but lack of supervision in schools has opened a quite floodgate of bribery among school authorities during admission periods.
Many parents, including the Sesay family, admitted giving money to heads of schools as school charges.
Musa told this press that he spent close to Le700,000 ($70 USD) to admit two of his children at BJMS (Bishop Johnson Memorial School) at junior level.
Musa sells tobacco cigarette and his wife is a fishmonger. A father of six is not happy about the situation of them asking to pay fees when they shouldn’t have to do.
With the existence of Free Quality Education (FQE), the Sesay family, just as other families in Sierra Leone, has been helped a lot by the government.
As expected, families need not hurry to even buy learning materials, especially exercise books, which the government promised to provide them. When the FQE Project was launched in early 2018, hopes were high that parents would no longer spend more to educate their children. But, Musa and Fatmata said, the situation is completely different as their sons and daughters were only given two books each.
What appears as more help, for parents, is government paying for public exams instead: (NPSE) National Primary School Examination; (BECE) Basic Education Certificate Examination and (WASSCE) West Africa Senior School Examination.
And instead of the SS4 system of education, adopted by the previous government, students now take three years upon sitting to the WASSCE.
Parents and children, at the time, rejuvenated with hopes of a new era. The era represented a new dawn of a comforter, President Bio, who would take off the yoke from their shoulders, paying fees.
The assuring words of hope SALONE FOR BETTEH became a familiar refrain among supporters of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). The promises of free and quality education were insistently framed in SLPP’s New Direction with the slogan, Paopa Saone For Betteh, meaning Sierra Leone must advance.
However, the glaring hopes of parents gradually faded away due to the FQE’s several shortcomings. For instance, most approved teachers have not been receiving appreciable salaries. Many schools have not been providing subsidies, a situation which renders the schools to remain in perennial dereliction.
And although FQE attracts a budget of 21 per cent, the condition of teachers has not been improved from its existing murky state.
However, parents themselves have been caught in a naughty situation owing to economic hardship across the country. The situation is so serious that some parents could no longer instill discipline on their children at home.
As businesses continue to fall, the Sesay family has had difficulties to bring up their kids. Added to that is keeping the home alive, but when food is not at home the children dictate the tune of their lives and whereabouts.
“Our children have become so stubborn. My second eldest son, Abdulai, gives us more head ache. Whenever he returns home he would search all over the place for money. Quite recently I gave him about Le 800,000 (USD $ 80) to do cash exchange business on the streets. He squandered all that money,” Musa explains.
Abdulai is taking hard drug, ‘kush,’ and that has made him even madder. “We spent about Le10m ($ USD 500) to get him cured. He has got healing now but he still acts crazy,” says Musa.
Musa had one time stopped selling tobacco ties, but later he thought it necessary to continue the business. Whilst his wife goes to Mabela to buy fish from a company, he looks after the kids at home. Fatmata sells the raw fish at Dove Cut Market and she reserves the little profit she earns for home cooking.
”We use Le40,000 for daily cooking, and sales get stiff these days,” they say.
In Sierra Leone, especially in the slums, it is common to see children from low income families dashing to neighborhood compounds in search of something to eat.
And most young girls take to prostitution when endemic hardship strikes most homes.
Because things get tougher for them, Musa says, her eldest daughter usually go out sleeping in men’s homes. It means Sadiatu, herself like Abdulai, has gone off the hook. She is now a prostitute and her father couldn’t control her anymore.
The local parlance, when pot is not on fire, is having a damning effect on homes. Owing to the inability of parents to clothe, feed and to meet some of their accompanying needs, children become rebellions at home. Sadiatu, her father says, is 21 years old while Abdulai is 18 years.
Both of them feel grown-up doing what deems fit for them. Their father couldn’t discipline them properly.
“During the civil war, the rebels crushed a cutlass across my palms. Since then I couldn’t hold any hard thing with it. Neither could I slap someone with my affected palm. So my children know about my problem hence they do what they feel like doing,” he complains.
The tobacco seller has been into the business for 15 years, but when business slows down he takes credit as loans.
And sometimes, he says, when he defaults in paying, his wife helps out to avoid embarrassment from loan givers.
“We are currently paying Le 47,000 per week for a micro credit loan,” he says. They worry over the loan; because in an event there is any default they may be arrested by loan officials.
But despite their fears they hadn’t any choice but to seek for loans. They sought loan assistance from a private business man at Abacha Street, a famous place for business activities. But, however, they couldn’t get the Le5,000,000 (five million Leones), an equivalent of USD $ 500, they needed to switch to other profitable business.
In the height of COVID-19 pandemic, National Commission for Social Action (NaSCA) was disbursing funds to business individuals and petty traders. But Musa and her wife never benefited from the emergency response fund donated to Sierra Leoneans.
“I wasn’t in Freetown at the time when the disbursement was made,” Musa says.
And the inflationary trend in the country means devaluation of the local currency. As prices of commodities keep soaring, families have little money to save other than to meet feeding demands.
However, it is fair to say that FQE has helped parents mostly in area of public exams, which is now free. But the prevailing hardship, created on many low income families in Sierra Leone, far outweighs the benefits of the country’s free education.
If FQE is to succeed in the coming years, government must increase the salaries of teachers and employ more supervisors at schools during admission periods. It’s believed that school authorities would be discouraged from allegedly collecting money from parents as schools charges.