By Saio Marrah
The Public Account Committee (PAC) of parliament, has ordered the Audit Service Sierra Leone to do a special report on the 2019 financial report on the Freetown City Council (FCC) within one month to ascertain why the audit service was constrained in auditing the council’s Transform Freetown Projects.
It could be recalled that sometime back the PAC invited the Mayor to answer issues raised in the 2019 Auditor General’s report that there were 49 projects that were under the transform Freetown implemented on behalf of the FCC by other agencies which the Audit Service was unable to audit because the information required cannot be obtained at the time of audit.
The Chairman of the PAC, Sengepoh Solomon Thomas, who is also the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, while addressing the Mayor and her team at the committee in parliament, on Wednesday 19th January 2022, highlighted concern raised in the 2019 Audit Report on FCC that the transform Freetown priority budget was not linked to the council’s budget, which means the budget was not completed due to the omission.
The Finance Officer of FCC, Ishmaila Bah, answers questions from the Chairman of the PAC, noting that he was not adequately informed about the donor funds and that he was only informed by the Mayor during managerial and council meetings that the council was expecting donor funds.
He added that the documentation of the budget was not presented to the management of the council. According to him, to put any funding into the budget, you need to have the budget, the revenue, and the breakdown of the expenditure which were never accessible to him.
He, therefore, noted that they did not have access to the budget to input it into their system for the donor funding.
The Chief Administrator of FCC, Festus Kallay, also made a similar submission. The Mayor, Yvonne Aki Sawyer in her response said she adequately informed the council and management about the donor funding. She added that all minutes of the council and managerial meeting of the FCC are proof to show that she adequately informed the council and management about the funds.
The Chairman of the Committee, therefore, ordered for the submission of the minutes of the managerial and council meeting as well as other relevant documents to the clerk of the committee later.
However, one of the members of the PAC, Daniel Koroma of Constituency 046 Koinadugu District, pointed out that the topic of discussion should focus on the Auditor General’s submission that the Audit Service was unable to audit the council because the information needed was not available to do the audit process.
In her response, the Mayor read documents which she said was from the Audit Service Sierra Leone which said “The revised financial statements with the disclosure of the Transform Freetown Projects were submitted and the disclosures of the project implemented by other agencies were duly verified therefore this issue has resolved.”
But the Assistant Auditor General, Aiah Gbondo Tugbawa, responded that the submission by the Mayor is totally different from what they, as the Audit Service did. He added that disclosing those facts in the financial statement, does not mean one should submit the document to the auditors to ascertain whether those funds were spent on the intended purposes.
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