By Hassan Osman Kargbo

The World Bank has boots eight City Councils with funding under its Resilient Urban Sierra Leone Project.

The Resilient Urban Sierra Leone Project is a 56-million-dallor project aimed at improving urban management, service delivery and disasters emergency management in the Western Area and secondary cities in Sierra Leone.

The ceremony was held at the Ministry of Finance Conference Hall George Street, Thursday 7^th September, 2023, Freetown.

The support from the World Bank project includes: motorbikes, computers among other equipment for the various councils.

The above equipment is to support the city project implementation teams (CPITs) in the various councils to enable them carry out their duties effectively.

Financial Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Mathew Dingie, officially presented the World Bank support  that include 24 motorbikes, 3 per council, 24 laptops, 3 per council, eight multipurpose printers 32 cartridges, eight tablets, 8 GPS devices, 8 digital cameras, eight mobile wireless modems with 14 month subscriptions per council, 16 phones, eight desktop computers and UPS.

Mr. Dingie admonished beneficiaries to ensure that the equipment are used judiciously to address their councils’ multi-sectorial urban development challenges.

He said the donation is meant to capacitate local councils to be in a better position to serve their communities. He said the RUSL project is providing lots of support to the councils to respond to disasters, waste management, and other social problems.

The Financial Secretary mentioned that local councils are the critical drivers in protecting environment, hence the need to capacitate their activities with such logistical support to aid their work.

He encouraged the mayors to work closely with the Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs in their respective project implementations.

The Deputy Minister of Local Government and Community Affairs, Alfred Moi Jamiru, profusely thanked all stakeholders and the World Bank for their continuous support to the councils.

He joined the Ministry of Finance in encouraging all the recipient councils to use the equipment prudently, saying that they should take advantage of the opportunity because donors are overstretched due to competing interests for limited available resources.

In his presentation, the Project Coordinator, Anthony Koroma, highlighted the four project components and activities: institutional and capacity developmental in integrated urban management, resilient municipal infrastructure investment and urban greening, emergency management, capacity development and project management, he noted.

Mayors and representatives from the various city councils such as Makeni, Bo, Kenema, Western Rural District, Bonthe, Port Loko, Koidu New Sembehun thanked the Ministry of Finance, the World Bank and the Project Implementing Unit for making the handover successful and committing to use the equipment for the intended purpose.