FCC Visits Victims of Landslide Disaster at Portee

Wednesday 2 September 2020, a small team from FCC, led by Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, visited the victims of a landslide disaster that happened in Portee on 26th August, 2020.

The disaster, which seems to have happened as a result of indiscriminate building of properties on a weakened slope and in a waterway, affected 13 households and 130 people.

The team, which also comprised of Deputy Mayor Osman T Koroma, Mrs Stella Smith (Head of Social Services Department), Cllr Fatmata Williams (409), Cllr Hannah Mary Jaiah (413), Cllr Agnes Marah (407), and Cllr Sheku Turay (408) engaged victims to understand how they have been coping since the disaster.

To each household, FCC made a donation of Le 1,000,000, a bag of rice, a bucket and packs of Maggi from the limited resources available to the Council as a result of its inability to roll out its new property rate regime.

FCC continues to urge residents to stop building properties in hazardous locations whilst we continue to prepare for the devolution of land use planning and building permit issuance from the Ministry of Lands to the local councils in accordance with the Local Government Act 2004 and under the supervision of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.

The lack of enforcement of building permits within the city and the granting of building permits in hazard prone areas continues to threaten lives and properties in the city. We can work together to improve our city with land use planning and an effective, environmentally sensitive building permit regime.