By Alusine Fullah
Councils are the highest political authority in their localities. They are responsible for promoting the development of their cities and the welfare of the people with resources at their disposals (Local Government Act, 2004). They have a major stake in all development programs and the collection of licenses and taxes within the city. Other responsibilities include:
Mobilization of human and material resources necessary for the overall development of the city and the people living there; Promoting and supporting productive activity and social development; Initiating and maintaining programs for the development of basic infrastructure and provides works and services; Initiating, drawing up and executing development plans for the city; Determining tax rates, approving annual budgets and overseeing the implementation of such a budget; and The formation of committees.
However, it is evident that the above assertion has brought sharp scrutiny in the eyes of many Sierra Leoneans. Many questions have been raised about their representation of their people in their localities. This is more so on the area of corruption. Money and contracts meant for the development of those councils are many a time embezzled. Money meant for culverts construction is embezzled by those councils. Money provided for the construction of hospital and schools is selfishly embezzled. How can those localities developed? Impossible!
In line with the above, having gone through the Audit Report, I have come to realize and conclude that the Anti-Corruption Commission of Sierra Leone should wake up and do the needful on those councils. Put differently, ACC should launch and investigations on those councils especially on projects assigned to them. Question like how those projects were implemented should be vividly asked.
The defects exposed by the auditors are a wake-up call to all sundry especially the ACC. According to the Sierra Leone Audit Report for 2022, local councils are in the constant habit of breaching procurement procedures. The report states: “In spite of repeated requests, procurement documents, amounting to SLE19,671,615.53 were not provided for audit…We carried out field verification on a sample of projects and observed that five LCs undertook 12 projects with a total contract cost of SLE20,783,629.70 which were yet to be completed, even though an average total of SLE7,261,123.25 (35%) had already been paid to the contractors.
Of grave concern was the fact that the completion dates had elapsed for all these projects, and there was no evidence of ongoing activities at the sites of these projects…”
The report have it that SLE 9,937,462 stood as the total value of irregularities of 22 Local Councils in the areas of expenses, revenue, procurement and contract management, salaries and payroll management, statutory deductions, store and assets. That notwithstanding, the number of clean audit opinions decrease from 21 (95) percent in 2021 to 19(86) percent in 2022.
Several local councils, like Kono District and Port Loko City Council dropped in their performance moving from clean audit opinions, while Tonkolili District Council moved from unqualified audit opinions.
