Sierra Leone’s crippling development process has always been attributed to grand or high place corruption across the country’s public sector.
A cancer known to be largely blamed for most of the major causes of retrogression in the country, and Governments in and out and including the incumbent President Julius Maada Bio and his governing Sierra Leone People Party (SLPP) upon coming in, vowed to fight graft leaving no stone unturned.
Pledges Sierra Leoneans have been hearing since Adam and Eve, yet corruption remains a huge problem in Sierra Leone public sector, largely involving politicians and public as well as civil servants, perpetuating corrupt practices with impunity.
Forum Newspaper in Thursday edition of Talking Point with no exception of is responsible for the alarm raised by the country’s key development partners in partnership with local civic actors on high place corruption is not any welcome news at all.
Considering the level of public education, gearing towards raising awareness by the Anti-Corruption Commission such was never expected to have come from the House of Parliament in particular, followed by the Sierra Leone Police-SLP and the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. For institutions as the SLP and MOHS they are not strange to such news as they have always been basking in graft.
Corruption being unearthed by a consortium of Centre for Accountability and the Rule of Law(CARL) and the Department for International Development (DFID) in its Corruption Perception Survey jointly published by DFID and CARL didn’t bring a good news, especially for a Government that had declared the it will have no sacred cow in fighting corruption. Thus if anyone is found wanting for corrupt practice will face the full penalties of the law of the land without fear of favour.
That has been largely compromised by the ACC and Government in pursuing corruption except for alleged corruption offences against last Government workers and main opposition All People’s Congress members which proved very much selective, leaving incumbent public sector workers in corruption with impunity.
DFID as an independent development has nothing to gain absolutely to come out so hatefully against the House of Parliament of a whole country if at all there is nothing so alarming that has to do with flouting of international best practices and largely undermining the collective efforts of Government and its development partners in the progress and development of Sierra Leone.
The DFID 2019 Corruption Perception report to a very large extent speak to so many graft issues in the public sector and no wonder the House of Parliament of the Republic of Sierra Leone disgracefully emerged as the most corrupt public institution in the country.
This is sad and very deceptive in that President Bio had long cautioned all and sundry against corruption with a whole jingle always aired on the national broadcaster, Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation.
So except if the administrators in Parliament want to tell Forum Newspaper and the entire Sierra Leonean public as well as the Government’s giant development DIFID that they are not in line with President Bio and Government’s firm stance on corruption, only to be exposed as the most corrupt in the country.
The news in fact brought shame to the Government of President Bio, ACC Commissioner, Francis Ben Kaifala and Audit Service Sierra Leone. It also speaks to the fact that certain people are not doing their jobs.
This medium would therefore join the popular call on Government to downsize openings for corruption in Government and restore public trust and confidence in state governance once more.
Also the oversight functions of the House of Parliament should be revisited if only we were to trust high level of confidence in probing the public sector for execution of their mandates in delivering on what exactly Government wants them to be doing.
By so doing corruption should be mitigated in the public sector as avowed by President Bio and such efforts must therefore be driven by all anti-graft agencies including the ACC, ASSL civic actors and host of key players in the fight against corruption who will collectively restore public confidence in the fight against corruption.
And to a very large extent those charged with the tasks of corruption mitigation should be seen working towards eradicating graft rather than chasing political rivals and opposition party members of the last administration.
