The Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs (MLGCA) has monitored the Building Accountable Systems through Empowered Community (BASE) activities in Local Councils in Kono, Moyamba, and the Western Area Rural District.
BASE, is a USAID-funded consortium of local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) including IGR, CARL, IRN, BAN, and 50-50 Group who targeted six Local Councils in five Districts including Moyamba, Kono, Karene, Falaba, and WARD-C with the aim of increasing citizen participation and transparency in local revenue and service management, coupled with improved service delivery, that will boost trust in local authorities and performance in decentralized service delivery.
As a Ministry that is charged with the constitutional responsibility to supervise Local Councils, the Local Government Ministry signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the consortium to monitor the said project. It’s on that note the Ministry divided its staff into two groups each headed by the Minister, Amb. Tamba Lamina, and his Deputy, Alfred Moi Jamiru, to carry out the monitoring exercise in 4 Councils.
In the inception meetings that were held with the leadership of both the Kono District Council and the Koidu New Sembehun City Council, the Minister of MLGCA, Ambassador Tamba Lamina announced that his team was in Kono to monitor how the two Councils implemented the BASE project which he described as one that aims to address challenges that have existed within the two decades of decentralization including weak resource mobilization, lack of planning coherence, consultation with the community people amongst others. He enquired about the methods that the two Councils used for the stakeholders’ engagements, the communities that they covered, the feedback from the community people, and the status of the strategic plan that informed the engagements.
Amb. Lamina later used that opportunity to monitor the operations and overall performance of the two Councils by asking about their relationship with the District and Chiefdom Administrations, the devolved sector heads, the performance of some core staff that have just been transferred, the status of revenue mobilization, their level of compliance with rules of transparency and accountability amongst others.
After thorough explanations by the heads of the two Councils around the questions asked by Minister Lamina and the team, he took notes, addressed the issues that needed a quick fix, and promised to discuss the ones that needed intervention by other MDAs with the relevant authorities.
Tamba Lamina and his team met with the entire core staff of both Councils in Kono and the devolved sector heads where the Director of Local Government, Brima Newman Combey explained the motive of the monitoring. All sector heads updated the team on the status of their activities in the District.
The monitoring activities climaxed with radio talk shows where the general public was informed about how the process went.
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Credit: Frederick V. Kanneh
