Sierra Leone’s President, Julius Maada Bio has engaged stakeholders in Kailahun District, and expressed appreciation for their massive turnout on the last day of the second phase of the voter registration exercise.

The engagement is part of President Bio’s nationwide tour, which he said that he is happy to embark on in order to register his appreciation of the voter registration process.

While addressing the district, President Bio thanked the registered voters for exercising their civic duties, propped stakeholders for their firm belief in democratic principles and appreciated their working together to ensure that citizens were responsible.

He said his government’s spending on education had been tremendous because of his campaign commitment made while vying for the presidency before 2018, adding that the Free Quality Education commitment was not only increasing school enrollment but was also ensuring more access to quality education for girls and boost the rate of retention.

President Bio also stated that his government would continue to empower more women and girls, a willingness demonstrated in the recent West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination results.

President Bio said because of his commitment to human capital development, he was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General to co-chair the global education summit at the recent United Nations General Assembly.

He assured citizens in that part of the country of his government’s commitment to ensuring that the Kailahun-Koindu road was tarred and revealed that commencing from Monday, 10 October 2022, residents of Kono District will start enjoying uninterrupted electricity as part of his government’s nationwide commitment to electrify all district headquarter towns.

Paramount Chief of Luawa, PC Mohamed Kailondo Banya, on behalf of his colleagues, thanked the President for his nationwide development efforts, especially his commitment to human capital development through the free quality education programme, which had attracted not only enrolment but also increased retention of more girls than ever before.

He called on the President to consider them in his quest to transform the country by empowering them with mobility, stating that most of them were not mobile as a result of the bad road network in the chiefdoms, adding that that was preventing them from actively participating in national issues.

He confirmed that, as traditional leaders, their key priority was to work and support all the development strides of the government of the day.