In this age of climate change, when the global community clamors to transition from hydropower to solar power as to curb greenhouse gas emission which troubles mother Earth, President George Manneh Weah has got on top of the innovative development game, yet again. The countryside, which is the largest and most populated region of the country, severely hungers of electricity, and the way the President wishes to nurse that deficit is to resort to clean energy for the rural majority of Liberians. To cascade that endeavor, the President has launched streets-and-communities lighting project, using one of the country’s remotest and most neglected hamlets, Sasstown, as a pilot in his drive to take light to impoverished and rural communities. The Analyst reports.
One of Liberia’s remotest communities Sasstown, located in the Southeastern province of Grand Kru, is the latest community to benefit from President George Manneh Weah’s effort to light up streets and communities across the country.
Inaugurating the Monrovia street project a month ago, an event that marked the restoration of street lights for the first time in two decades in the nation’s capital, the President said electricity is the lifeblood of development and security everywhere, and that spreading electric power to the people of Liberia was an imperative which is government is now giving utmost priority.
As he embarks on his first nationwide tour, which allows him to come face-to-face with rural people and experience firsthand the conditions they endure, the Liberian leader’s desire to light up communities appears emboldened.
While in Fish Town, River Gee, where the President overly lamented the impoverished conditions people of the county are faced with, he promised to light up the city and build 200 pro-poor housing units.
On the last stop of the six-county tour in his hometown of Sasstown, where he and his entire entourage spent over three days, the President instructed the lighting of the streets. In twenty-four hours, the locals burst in a frenzy of celebration as the main street of city got illuminated with solar lights.
During a brief ceremony to dedicate the commencement of the street lighting project in Sassatown, the Liberian Chief Executive reiterated his government’s plan to make every Liberian and every Liberian community have a fair share of the national cake.
“For us, distance away from the capital, social class, and political affiliation are no barrier to any Liberian to benefit from the resources of this country,” the President said. “Our intention is to connect with every Liberian and spread out the national wealth for all.”
The President continued: “For far too long, rural communities were ignored in our country and the time has come to end the nightmare for our people. Our people in the remotest corner of this country deserve better. They, too, deserve to live in communities with decent housing and light. That’s their right.”
With sporadic pledges by the President to light of villages and towns and build pro-poor housing units replete with bathrooms and kitchen, it is expected that there would soon emerge a satellite of what folks are calling “cities in the jungle.”
With the “Cities in the Jungle” campaign hitting remote Sasstown, it is said the President is accelerating efforts to reach many more communities, particularly in the countryside.
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