Kambia & Port Loko, 20 February 2025- Alex Bonapha ESQ, Director of the Descentralization Secretariate has put Paramount Chiefs and other Community Stakeholders in Port Loko and Kambia Districts up to speed with provisions in the proposed amended Safe Motherhood Bill.
It could be recalled that in June 2024, the Safe Motherhood Bill was tabled in the Parliament of Sierra Leone. However, the said Bill faced scrutiny and debate, especially from the religious communities. As a Government that is committed to promoting cultural values while promoting women’s health and rights, the Ministry of Health and the Local Government Ministry have collaborated to meet and explain the same to traditional leaders and other community stakeholders across the country.
Explaining the purpose of the engagement, the Deputy Secretary of Local Government, Sahr Francis Mondel said the Government through Health and Local Government Ministries decided to send 2 teams across the country to discuss the proposed amended Bill and have the view of the traditional leaders and community stakeholders on the same. He urged the participants to listen attentively and ask questions on areas that they might need clarification.
Explaining the Bill to the participants in the two districts, Director Bonapha ESQ said there had been a whole lot of misconceptions about the Bill in question since it was tabled in Parliament and that 95 percent of the people who hold negative views about it have not even read any provision in the same, adding that the district’s engagement is to explain the very provisions in the bill that have been misunderstood and allow the traditional leaders and other community stakeholders to give their inputs.
Director Bonapha went ahead to briefly draw reference to the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 5 which talk about women’s protection and Gender equality, and the benefits of having laws that would give women the right to determine what they would do with their bodies in certain circumstances. He disclosed that Part 2 of the said proposed Bill explicitly outlines the circumstances where it is safe to terminate the pregnancy, mentioning the situation where the pregnancy would endanger the life of a woman or adolescent girl, where there is a malformation of the fetus, where the termination is necessary to prevent injury to the physical health of the pregnant woman or adolescent girl, or where the pregnancy is as a result of sexual penetration, rape or incest. He, however, noted that all of the above circumstances would only be deemed to be the truth based on the advice of a certified medical practitioner or police report that would testify that indeed, sexual penetration, rape, or incest has occurred contrary to the misconception that women would be at will to terminate pregnancy as and when they feel like.
He furthered that the proposed Bill has also gotten rid of the “gender” indication in part 3 where it talks about the right to access reproductive health services which was also a concern in the first Bill.
He later got the participants to read together line by line all the controversial parts of the Bill and he took time out to explain all the proposed amended text, which served as a huge help to the traditional leaders and other community stakeholders in the 2 Districts.
In his remarks, the Head of the Parliamentary Committee on Local Government Said the countrywide engagement is a huge help to their work as makers because it gives them the opportunity to get the direct views of the people in the communities.
The Resident Minister of the North-Wester Region, Amb, Born Wurrie said Paramount Chiefs are the first port of call in any situation that has to do with local communities in Sierra Leone and that there is no way any Government would succeed in its implementation plans without their involvement. As such he committed the Bill in their hands to cascade to their subjects. He also regarded the Local Government Ministry as the biggest and most useful Ministry in reaching out to everyone in the country when it comes to a Bill of such nature.
The feedback from the participants was huge as most of them admitted that they were misinformed initially but with the thorough explanation of the Bill, they realize that it is more of help than what they were thinking.
The two engagements were Chaired by the District Officer of Kambia and the Senior District Officer of Port Loko District.
For more details:
Frederick V. Kanneh
Information Officer
MLGCA
