These are the words of the deputy leader of the opposition in the House of Parliament who said for the past five years during the Fifth Parliament they cried for the Auditor-General’s Reports to be debated, but they never got the opportunity to do so.
The honourable member of the House said there are no independent institutions in the Sierra Leone government except for the Audit Service Sierra Leone. He promised that every finding presented to the House by the Public Accounts Committee will be debated by the House.
It must be noted here that the work of the PAC has been very encouraging to the people of Sierra Leone. Since 2018 we have not had a debate of the AG’s report on how members of this regime that came to power to fight corruption and block financial leakages have been handling the public purse. The past reports have been collecting dust on shelves in the office of PAC of the Fifth Parliament.
Instead of debates all we have been getting as the public are justifications and qualifications of the reports into how MDAs handled public money by no less than the Anti-Corruption Commission. Now, we have assurance from the Sixth Parliament that any report from the PAC on MDAs will be debated by the House.
The hope for parliamentary debates on how public funds were spent by those entrusted with such money hit an indefinite snag when president Bio, after the ASSL showed that among other things there were instances of double dipping, forgery of receipts and payment in cash of $157,000 to settle hotel bills by members of the office of the president including corruption in the office of the first lady, ordered that audits of his office and the offices of his wife and the vice president not be included in audit reports.
The fight against corruption and financial leakages was lost with this order from above that was ignored by the ASSL that many said led to the indefinite suspension of the substantive heads of the institution, the Auditor-General Lara Taylor-Pearce and her deputy Tamba Momoh by the president.
Fast forward to the Sixth Parliament!
Today we have a PAC actively debating the AG’s report and publically querying those responsible to explain how they handled public money at public institutions. The revelations and disclosures have been shocking and revolting. They have showed how people disburse public money against set procedures with documentation mostly missing to back such disbursements.
Members of the public have been very impressed with the work of the Public Accounts Committee which clearly shows that the anticorruption fight despite the active sensitisation the ACC has been doing across the country has not been effective in curtailing the menace. Those entrusted with public money have been taking liberty handling such. While the committee’s work clearly shows that the regime has not been effectively blocking leakages, they have proceeded and managed to give the public a clear indication of how the anticorruption fight has been going.
What is now left is the retribution against those found wanting or complicit in spending public money in ways they weren’t intended. We have not seen prosecutions, forfeitures, seizing of assets and properties, we have not seen anyone jailed for stealing from the public.
Were the regime really serious about putting a stop to this national development killer, it should be working with the ASSL, the ACC, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the PAC to expose, shame and jail or fine and absolutely sack those found wanting for not only stealing from their bosses, the people of Sierra Leone, but for also embarrassing the president in his campaign to get rid of Sierra Leone’s number one governance nemesis; corruption and financial leakages.
Meanwhile, the public praise and thank the PAC for their querying of the MDAs based on the AG’s reports. Such debates and actions from the committee to address such spending will go a long way to act as deterrence against would be copycats. While some people will not be caught up in the dragnet, those caught must meet the full weight of the law.
This way, one day at a time, year in year out we will get to weed out the corrupt and criminally negligent from our civil service.
