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Sixty-two women who have spent over two years of their adult lives cleaning State House, hoping against hope that by doing so their lives will be changed forever for the good, have found to their disappointment that the seat of government is using them as pawns to avoid either giving the cleaning contract to companies or employing proper cleaners to do the job for pay.
The women spoke exclusively to Peep! narrating a very sorrowful tale about how humans can use and misuse their fellow-men by creating for them false hopes only to later pull the carpet from under them.
“After the Elections,” one of the women explained in Temne wiping tears, “we were just joyful that APC won, so to show our solidarity we decided to volunteer to help in cleaning parts of the city”.
The women who all live at Susan’s Bay said that there were sixty-five of them originally but “three have died due to the hardship they were going through since September 2007.
Come rain or shine we were busy sweeping from Eastern Police Station to State House and every nook and cranny of the compound.”
According to the women, nobody from State House even attended the dead women’s funeral.
“It is as if they see us as idlers and fools but at the same time they need our services and keep raising our hopes that some day everything will be okay”, another of the women said.
Despite the services the women are rendering they have received onlyLe120, 000 each in payment, paid in two installments: the first which was Le70, 000 paid in February, 2008 and the second of Le50, 000 paid July 2008.
The women who work between 7a.m and 4p.m said that they are served about 2 cups of rice every day for all sixty two of them.
“We eat by turns,” one distraught woman who looks in her forties, said. “Because that quantity of food can satisfy only three people we rotate the eating which means that it can take up to nearly two months before one can get her turn”.
The women who suspected that they are being cheated by either their chairlady or the sitting Councilor said that they have taken their complaints about their plight right up to the level of the President even bribing a State House security officer to take their letter to him but it is apparent their complaints have been falling on deaf ears.
The women who were carrying their brooms in pride when they started said that they can no longer do so.
“We have now become objects of ridicule,” a frail lady said “when the Abacha street traders see us they mock us by making cat calls and asking what the hell is wrong with our brains”.
Asked why they keep going to State House when they are not receiving anything, they were unanimous in their response: False Hope. His Excellency Ernest Bai Koroma could not be reached to explain to this press whether or not he is aware of the plight of the women who keep his offices spink and spank every day and whether or not he received any letter from them. |
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