The recently published Technical Audit Report has revealed that the Sierra Leone Roads Authority has largely compromised the conduct of Environmental Impact Assessment for all the eighteen (18) ROAD PROJECTS currently going on in the country.
The Technical Audit findings, amongst other things, have discovered that contractors did not submit and conduct Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before starting the projects thereby leading to delays and disputes among the contracting parties as well as the Environment Protection Agency.
The report further reveals that there were only two EIA reports prepared by M/s Techsult & Company Limited, in collaboration with SLRA for Taima-Njala Road project and by M/s Compagine Saheliene DÉnterprises for Kabala Township Phase II.
The other 16 remaining projects audited are Bandajuma Pujehun, Kailahun Township, Moyamba et.al., Blama-Hanga, Weima Bridge, Freetown Streets Phase II, West Zone Lot 3 and Freetown Streets Phase II, East Zone Lot 1, Makeni – Kabala Phase II, Wilkinson Road, Kono-Kabala Township, Kissy Road, Fourah Bay Road, Magazine Cut, Macauley Street, Haja Sonie Drive, UN Drive et. al. The King Jimmy Embankment and drainage works did not have EIA reports before starting them, thereby leading to delays and disputes among the contracting parties as well as EPA, the technical audit report concluded.
SLRA was urged to carry-out comprehensive environmental impact assessment prior to undertaking any road project, so as to ascertain environmental threats and social effects and propose mitigation measures when the projects will be undertaken in order to maintain a reasonable foreseeable road project costs; review the design-and-build approach to make it necessary for contractors to prepare and submit both the environmental and social impact assessment as well as the environmental management plan during the bidding process.
The current administration, like the previous one, is also undertaking fresh road contracts and also completing old ones started by the previous administration. It is not likely that the issue of ensuring that EIA considerations, which are legal pursuant to the Environmental Protection Act, are being followed.
It is an established fact that several road projects in the country have continued to disregard environmental considerations in the execution of road projects, flower and fauna have been destroyed and such the livelihood of several communities along these road projects have been relocated with no mitigating impacts to the destructions done to their immediate environments.
This practice is common in Government and donor funded projects where most times the people are disadvantaged with the view that Government is bringing developments to their doorsteps.