We had a government with a monster face and we have hopefully ushered in a government with a human face. The outgone government cared only for the amelioration of the opulent and the impoverishing of the indigent. They only came to the realization that people power rested with the indigent who are more numerous than their cabal members. The actions of the past APC government can only be reminiscent of the Nazi regime in their heartlessness.
Pension benefits were so minimal that the previous SLPP government had to come in with the National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) to salvage civil servants and others on the Consolidated Revenue Fund from miserable deaths.
The catch here is that the new Scheme resulted in a huge hiatus between the retirement benefits of the NASSIT pensioners and the Pre-NASSIT pensioners.
As cost of living continues to rise previous governments before the penultimate one used to revise the pensions across the board regardless of NASSIT or non –NASSIT. Even the military regime of Johnny Paul Koroma used to do so. On the scene came the government of Ernest Koroma with their sadistic tendencies. They have been revising pensions of NASSIT pensioners only stating that it was no business of theirs to revise those pensions. This is in spite of the fact that pensioners of the same length of service in the NASSIT era were now earning umpteen times the pensions of their pre-NASSIT colleagues.
Former President Dr.Siaka Stevens was a man who rose from the ranks as an ordinary dog-police and therefore knew what human suffering was.In his revisions of salaries he used to award a higher percentage to the lower wage earners in order to bridge the gap.Not so for the sadist who succeeded him.Ernest Koroma refused to budge in spite of all sorts of pleadings.
Coming from a chieftaincy family Julius Maada Bio must be aware of what inequality means in a polygamous setting unless he was one of the Chief’s favourite sons.In the Military he must have known what suffering is. Though he does not now don the military uniform he cannot go down the path of Ernest Koroma without suffering the same consequences.
It was Gassan Abess from the Center for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL) who exposed the concoction that the APC is a grassroots party. He revealed during a regional conference in Sierra Leone on ‘Petty Offences’ “If petty offences are decriminalized,governments can save more on food for inmates on a daily basis “ He went on “Governments spends Le 60,000 to feed one inmate per day of which many inmates in correctional centers and police custody were arrested for Committing petty offences, he asserted. It works out at Le 1,800,000 (One million eight hundred thousand Leones) per month spent by the diabolical APC government on each criminal while a retired Brigadier was earning a pension of Le 70,000 (Seventy thousand Leones) per month.
Being a government of sturdy rogues they had more in common with criminals and therefore sought their welfare better than retired civil servants who had served the state faithfully. It is the prayer of hundreds of miserable pensioners that all those in the last regime who are responsible for the malaise should not live to see the return of the APC to power if at all but should spend their eternity in hell fire.Man’s inhumanity to man is one of the greatest thoughts of the universe .
President Bio should not follow that hell-bent direction but should strike out his NEW DIRECTION in this regard.