The United States Embassy in Sierra Leone has announced that they will not be regularly updating their Facebook account. In a Facebook post on Wednesday on their official ‘U.S Embassy Freetown, Sierra Leone’, it was stated that due to a lapse in appropriations, the account would not be updated regularly until full operations resume. Analysts suggest that this reduction is likely due to the U.S. Government shutdown that went into effect on Wednesday.
The announcement states: “Due to the lapse in appropriations, this Facebook account will not be updated regularly until full operations resume, with the exception of urgent safety and security information.
“During this time, scheduled passport and visa transit services in the United States and at U.S. Embassies and Consulates overseas will continue as the situation allows during the lapse in appropriations. We will refrain from updating this account until full operations resume, with the exception of urgent safety and security information. For information on our services and operating status, please visit travel.state.gov.”
Our EyeWitnessNews monitoring team has observed similar announcements on multiple U.S. Embassies’ Facebook pages. The U.S. Government shutdown commenced at midnight on Tuesday after senators were unable to pass a short-term funding bill that would have kept it open for several weeks while they worked on full appropriations packages.
