Sierra Leone Road Transport Corporation (SLRTC) has reiterated that 100 brand new, customized buses arrived in Sierra Leone last month of July 2015. Mr. Rodney Tamba Kaimachiande who is the Monitoring & Evaluation Officer at SLRTC was reacting to allegations aired over the weekend by Mr. David Tamba Baryoh, on the widely listened MONOLOGUE radio programme.
Monologue David Tamba Baryoh’s claims were strongly refuted by Tamba Kaimachiande who reminded that when the 100 buses arrived, they were not only driven through the streets of Freetown but also all 100 of them were parked at the national stadium where citizens openly inspected all 100 of them.
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SLRTC's Rodney Tamba Kaimachainde |
Mr. Kaimachiande also personally took this press to again inspect the 100 different buses on Sunday 9th and Monday 10th August 2015 during which we were allowed to inspect license documents and lifecards of the buses which are all running various routes around the country.
Awareness Times can confirm that there are indeed an additional 100 new buses now in operation.
“Each bus has a unique number plate with a unique license registration life card from SLRSA that contains a unique engine number and a unique chassis number. For example, the engine number for AKU001 is EQB12578100219 and it is unique from the factory and only that bus has that number. The chassis number for that bus is LJ166E4D0E2016871 and it is also unique. This is so for each bus all the way down to bus with license AKU100 which has an engine number EQB12578059759 and chassis number of LJ166E4D7E2016822,” Mr. Kaimachiande patiently explained.
The SLRTC official said the doors of his institution were always opened to journalists who want to cross-check facts. He therefore urged journalists to learn to cross check their facts and not rely on anonymous or unidentified callers as source for radio broadcasts.
On his radio programme past weekend, journalist Tamba Baryoh had said a strange caller had called him to say that only 85 buses arrived in the country. Tamba Baryoh said he did not know the person who called him but yet he went ahead to relay the allegation from the unknown caller over his widely listened programme.
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Newspaper in Freetown, Sierra Leone.