The Chairman is also looking at a framework to secure a brand-new fire engine that meets international aviation standards.
On 28th June 2018, Chairman Umaru Napoleon Koroma paid an unannounced visit to the Sierra Leone Road Transport Corporation during which he found out that the Corporation can be revitalised by a complete overhaul. With a new leadership now firmly in place, the NCP has initiated moves to attract viable private capital investment into the SLRTC.
In late August, putting words into action, the NCP Chairman was part of a high-powered delegation including the Minister of Transport and Aviation, Kabineh Kallon, and officials from relevant institutions that left Sierra Leone to hold exploratory discussions for a potential investment into the transport sector to procure buses from RDC Company Limited. The investment would facilitate the procurement of 200 buses to ease the acute transport problem in the country. The agreement would include a fully-equipped vehicle workshop and spare parts, according to NCP sources.
On 19th June 2018, Chairman Koroma, who also doubles as Scribe of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), presided over a meeting between the SLPA Staff Union and Management over the payment of redundancy benefits.
The Union claimed that their members (SLPA employees) were sacked in 2015 and their terminal benefits paid under side arrangements without recourse to the country’s labor laws, following the privatization of some operations of the ports to the private sector.
The NCP Chairman, in collaboration with the leadership of the Sierra Leone Labor Congress, SLPA and Ministry of Labor, has pledged to negotiate an amicable resolution of the matter.
In July 2018, following the lifting of the ban on timber exports by the government, a large amount of timber containers stored at the Freetown Terminal Limited at the Queen Elizabeth II Quay had accrued huge sums of money in storage fees. Tough negotiations, led by the NCP, resulted to the grant of a waiver amounting to Le14 billion in storage charges by Freetown Terminal Limited.
By end of July this year, workers at the two government-owned banks – Sierra Leone Commercial Bank and Rokel Commercial Bank – downed tools following the approval of a government Supplementary Budget by Parliament which pegged leave allowance for staff at State-Owned Enterprises.
