The popular expression that if one does not know where he/she is coming from, then they must know where they are going in anything sober minded human effort one doing in life. For living a life without a well-structured and focused agenda is a complete mess.
This must correspondingly be applied to our homes, businesses, and to large extent state governance activities and programmes with mammoth potentials of impacting positively on the living standards of Sierra Leoneans as always expected from any responsible political administration.
Previous political administrations of late former President Alhaji Dr Ahmed Tejan Kabbah brought us as a nation the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper I and II, followed by his successor, former President Dr Ernest Bai Koroma and his last All People’s Congress (APC), which also had the Agenda for Change and later the Agenda for Prosperity, as clear development blueprints which delivered effectively delivered development programmes across the country.
Those documents inherited and implemented so many programmes and developmental activities that were left unfinished by the then Kabbah era.
Likewise the present administration much was expected from government to have earlier rolled out its development agenda with clear vision of moving forward with fair share of transformative infrastructural development programmes from where its predecessor former President Koroma and the last APC stopped closed to three years now.
Such isn’t in function all these while under the political leadership of the government of President Dr Julius Maada Bio and his ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). A party that used all its campaign periods criticising the last APC government for wasting public funds on what they described as “cosmetic” roads in a bid to divert attentions from the good works of the last hardworking Koroma led APC regime.
Like a lost course, the present administration could not in any way move on with programmes it inherited from its predecessor as planned and done by the last government. Instead, they tried to reinvent the wheel by starting all over with what they now normally refer to as mid-term development plan, an already failed agenda which the Ministry of Development is busy imposing on the people, as there is still no solid developmental landmark to point at under the existing dispensation.
Nothing else not even the road leading to neither Bonthe district, nor the one connecting the home village of President Bio, Thihun Sogbini in Bonthe is given attention.
Apart from that, there is no new road right across the country, nor a road work in progress since the government of President Bio sit in to serve as if there is no fund for roads maintenance neither for the construction of new roads in a nation that is badly in need of road infrastructure to complement is national development agenda.
To make matter worse in trying to justify wastages of huge amounts of tax payers’ Leones, the Sierra Leone presented a cooked cost at Le 52bn for just 2000 kilometres of roads to the Works Committee in the House of Parliament. That is unimaginable whiles Freetown and other major township roads are being left pot riddled. It is unacceptable situation as government should be making judicious uses of public funds to meet the needs of all as in line in equitable distributions of national wealth in which ever forms.
Government’s failures in prioritizing development projects as needed by communities, is due to its blatant lack of a clear development blueprint at hand since it took up office that is why there is still no headway in all what government is doing.
Programmes that were never promised in President Bio’s SLPP 2018 new direction campaign manifesto as the Lungi Bridge, among other hug wash deals, are now the most talked about and are hardly yielding fruits nor attempting to touch of the lives of the ordinary man.
Into the specifics of the mismanagement of public funds to the tune of Le 52bn on what the incompetent Sierra Leone Roads Authority calls “feasibility studies” which was never clearly justify to the Hon. Chairman of the Works Committee in the House of Parliament, Bashiru Silikie of the ruling SLPP, Forum Newspaper thus loudly adds its voice to the call by that praiseworthy sub-legislative body for further probing into the programmes and activities of the SLRA.
By so doing, the public will be appropriately informed about how such a huge amount of Leones were wasted on ordinary studies, while unpaved roads are everywhere in Sierra Leone.
Such are too much exploitations for a country that is still battling to reconcile a better GDP to an admirable form, having failed to meet promises of blocking all financial leakages, only to be seen lavishing such a colossal amount of money of so-called studies. That must stop now and those in charge of the infrastructure sector must ensure that public funds meant for road constructions and otherwise are judiciously utilized meeting values for money.
What exactly does the shameless authority wants to tell the public about its blunders. Is it that they have forgotten so soon about all the pledges of restoring financial prudency, or were they just beating the drums war against their political opponents?
The government must treat the people of Sierra Leone with all level of seriousness by practicing exactly what they say instead of doing completely different thing as they are doing now. And as promised, you have so far done nothing in closed to three years now. For all is being experienced are that yours are even worse than those you were busy opposing.
So tell us what exactly is changing or has actually changed when everything is reversing from bad to worse?
And mush as the findings of the report by the Works Committee in the House on the programmes and activities of the SLRA were never cleared before Hon. Chairman Silikie, it remains a serious concern that deserve urgent national attentions from Audit Service Sierra Leone and the Anti-Corruption Commission if only we were to consolidate our national effort in mitigating corruption in public sector of Sierra Leone ensuring value for money and curtail mismanagement of public funds by government workers.
Then say no more corrupt wastage of tax payers’ moneys by immoral public sector operators and by extension government must provide a formidable long/short terms development blueprints on the way forward for our national development strides rather than a catch up funding of road works to secure political point to take to elections campaigns. And mark you your failures to plan, is now appropriately earning you your destructive plans to fail disgracefully.
