By Jariatu S. Bangura
The Institute for Governance Reform (IGR) through Citizens Manifesto has demanded that, political parties should consider achieving 50% youth employment in the next five years, to avoid the high unemployment rate in the country.
According to the Executive Director, Andrew Lavalie, most times youth fail to ask questions as to how political parties will handle their employment priorities and what they will put in place or prioritize for them once they take over the governance of the nation.
He said in other countries, ways are created for youth employment and that such is not done in Sierra Leone hence they want the political debate to be around youth employment.
He said in the 2023 Citizens Manifesto, they demanded five key things for political parties to bear in mind or be included in their manifestos once they win the 2023 national elections.
He said the next government should consider doing even distribution of appointment to regions, so that no region will get appointment not less than 15% and no region will enjoy more than 30% appointment.
He stated that MPs and Presidential aspirants should publish their assets on or before nomination.
He said in the first year of governance, the emerging party should also try to introduce traffic light and reduce traffic officers from the street to avoid the incident that took place on August 10 between citizens and police officers.
He added that after those incidents, it was established that police accountability had gone very low since 2012 to date and also one area that shows their fall is the police traffic management which has implication on market women increasing the price of their goods cost after calculating what they have spent along the way to the market.
