By: Ilyasa Baa
Makeni City Council (MCC) which is supposed to use its resources on the cleaning of the city’s cemeteries has proven otherwise with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saint coming onboard to executive the cleaning of the Makeni City Cemetery over the weekend.
The MCC, according to tax payers in Makeni city, is snail paced towards carrying out its responsibilities especially in the area of cleaning the city and the clearing of garbage. Abu Bakarr Turay, a trader at the Clock Tower informed this medium that every day the MCC collects huge amount of cash in dues collected for the cleaning and beautification of the city but don’t see what the council is doing towards making sure public facilities like the cemetery is kept clean at all times.
Zainabu Kamara, at Freetown Lorry Park said the Council should not wait for people who do not collect tax to carry out its duties and responsibilities towards the people of Makeni. She said the Council should be proactive.
The Makeni City Cemetery has got a facelift after the Church of Latter Days Saint of Jesus Christ engaged in a massive cleaning exercise.
The Director of Public Affairs/Communication of the Church, Josephine Memunatu Kanu said the intervention of the Church was borne out of their desire that the dead should be respected and allowed to rest in peace. She said Christ visited the dead before his ascension to His Father in Heaven. She said the Church discovered that they should tailor down their intervention to the cleaning of the main cemetery as a way of showing respect to the dead.
The cleaning of the cemetery according to her is part of their All Africa Service Day which is observed in diverse ways every year.
“This year we had to choose the cemetery as our social corporate intervention for the benefit of the city”, she noted, adding that they have established good relationship with stakeholders in the city especially the Council. She informed A-Z that the Church has been well established in the five branches in the district such as in Tekoh,Rogbaneh, Makama, Magburaka Road and the area called New Jersey.
The Information, Education and Communication Officer, Edward Kpukumu has said the Council is going to the drawing board to see if they will use their own sourced revenue to clean the remaining cemeteries in the city. He said they have been giving support to organizations for cleaning the cemeteries and other public infrastructure adding that people should emulate the good example of the Church.
In the Freetown Municipality, the Sierra Leone Brewery Limited (SLBL) had provided funds to the Street Life Family Sierra Leone including Ward Councilors in the Wellington Industrial Area for the cleaning and beautification of the Wellington Community Cemetery.
The company together with stakeholders of the Wellington industrial area community engages hundreds of youths in the cleaning of the Wellington Cemetery. This cleaning and beautification exercise was one of many supports the Company was rendering to the community as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility.
The first official meeting of the LDS Church in Sierra Leone was held in Goderich in January 1988, with the first LDS missionaries arriving in May of that year. They were under the Liberia, Monrovia Mission. A district was organized in Freetown in 1990. At various times in the 1990s, missionaries were withdrawn due to the civil war in the country. In 1991, the Liberia Monrovia Mission was discontinued and Sierra Leone was placed under the Accra Ghana Mission. The first LDS -built meetinghouse in the country was completed in Bo in 2004. In 2007, the Sierra Leone Freetown Mission was created covering both Sierra Leone and Liberia. In December 2012, Jeffrey R. Holland created the first LDS stake in Sierra Leone in Freetown. In 2013, Liberia was split off to be its own separate mission.
