May 7, 2021
Albert Baron Ansu
It is official; the Liberia border has been reopened. But lest we forget the elephant in the room that is creating socio-economic embarrassment for folks and we cannot be remiss in our role to draw attention to an economic sabotage.
I will come to the dark reality of the story, but let me talk on bright issues first. The usual free flow of movement has been restored between Liberia and Sierra Leone. On both sides of the Mano River Bridge, Liberia and Sierra Leone, official joint security operatives have retaken their positions and assumed their routine responsibility of tax collection and processing of travellers document.
Many say this is a great strides; it is in the interest of sub regional integration. The two towns Bo Water in Grand Cape Mount in from the Liberian side and Gendema in Pujehun districts have awoken from the COVID 19 slumber.
The official reopening of the border is a testament to improved COVID 19 containment and offers an opportunity for accelerated development in the two countries. I saw hand washing facilities at the two gateways of the security posts in between the two countries.
However it is unfortunate that not much is done in enforcing hand washing norm of COVID 19 prevention. Masking up is even drastically reduced in adherence. It is a regression that comes with relaxation of the restrictions. Maybe people don’t want to be reminded about COVID 19 in the quest to make up for the lost season in doing small businesses and embark on works that have socio-economic advantages.
So you can see the frenzied movement of people from Sierra Leone and Liberia. The two countries use dual currencies in that border enclave. The Leone and Liberty currencies are medium of exchange. It used to be at parity- the 5000 Leones bill and 100 Liberian dollars bill of equal value. Now, that the trend has changed- the Liberty is slightly higher than the Leone. With 5000 Leones you can get eighty Liberia dollars. It is reduction of Two thousand Leones. The Liberian dollar beating the Leone in that part of the country has trick to it that is fishy and must be explained.
Time there was when the road linking from inland Sierra Leone was impassable at especially during the rainy season. The sludge and gullies made the distance to connect to Liberia like a journey from heaven to earth. It was a nightmare. Now, even as the road is work in progress- with few dusty diversions to navigate, from the second city Bo to Gendema, one cannot take more than five hours. Depending on the car it can be even be covered in shorter time space.
But here is the irony: a distance of less than 100 kilometers is charging Le75,000 from Gendema to Bo. This contrasts sharply with the over hundred kilometers distance from Freetown to Bo charging Le 40,000. The unregulated transport fare in that part of the country is causing undue price increase. Traders are facing hard times with transport fares. It is the Motor Drivers Union calling the shot and nobody seems to be checkmating them on the fair transport fare.
The drivers might be complaining about the checkpoint hand shake to the security details as a corrupt bribe paying scam that is ubiquitous; evident everywhere you go around the country.
Even as Sierra Leone has more goods than Liberia, it is understandably why folks at the Sierra Leone side are rushing to Liberia to buy their goods. It is this artificiality of things that is creating the socio economic distortion. Alas, nobody is going to act to stop this egregious robbery.