By Politico Staff writer
Increased absenteeism by Members of Parliament continues, according to the latest report by the Institute for Governance Reform (IGR). The second edition of IGR’s Parliamentary Performance Tracker report says “nearly a quarter (24%) of Sierra Leone MPs (35) did not attend half of the 14 sittings between January and March 2022.”
“This represents a 4% drop in attendance when compared to the last quarter of 2021 where 20% of MPs did not attend half of the sittings, according to the official attendance records published on the parliamentary website,” it says.
For January 2022, all the three sittings started on time, 10 am prompt, according to the report. For February, all the sittings started at 10:40 am on average while the average start time in March was 10:28 am.
According to the report, the sittings with the highest absenteeism so far this year happened on 17th February, 15th March, and 24th March with 88 MPs in attendance while 58 were absent, representing 39.7%.
Sitting should start at 10 a.m. and is mostly on Tuesdays and Thursdays but IGR says the situation has not improved from the last quarter of 2021. “Parliament rarely met on time, and we recorded an average late start of about 30 minutes for the quarter as the leadership waited to meet the 25%-member presence required to form a quorum,” the report states.
In May 2022, IGR also published a report revealing that about one-fifth of the MPs did not attend half of the sittings in the last quarter of 2021 (after monitoring their attendance.
The report revealed that 75% of MPs attended at least 50% of the 20 sittings and that about 20% of the MPs did not attend half of the 20 sittings and four of those were Paramount Chiefs.
In terms of monitoring the performance of Parliamentary Committees, it was stated that earlier this year, IGR released a report on the enforcement of recommendations of the annual audit report of GoSL.
“In total, 2,655 audit recommendations were produced by the Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) for all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and local councils for the period covering – 2015-2020,” the report reads.
It added “Only 38% of audit recommendations were enforced by Parliamentary Committees in the six years notably: Committees on Transport and Aviation (60%), Foreign Affairs (46%), Public Works and Assets (45%), and Sports (45%).
According to IGR, the purpose of monitoring the performances of MPs is to increase legislators’ commitment to their representative duties and to strengthen the legislative process.
Copyright © 2022 Politico Online (08/07/22)
