By Jenneh Braima
Kenema City Council (KCC) is facing Parliament again on Thursday, after the House refused three times to approve its budget.
The Chief Administrator of the council Daniel Saa Momoh told Politico on Monday that they were ready to meet all the demands that the House had used as bases to deny them allocation.
“I’m very much confident they will give us the money this time,” he said at his office.
There has been discontent among parliamentary officials who said they discovered that KCC could not account for a sum of Le 41 million which appeared to be a disparity out of the Le3.5 billion allocated to the council last year. The parliamentary oversight Committee on Finance reported that the council had spent more than it received from government and its partners.
Parliament therefore ordered KCC to redo its financial report, but the House has not shown that it’s satisfied with the council yet.
The Chief Administrator said for the past six months the council has lived more on home generated revenue, with little help from development partners. He said they had in 2014 raised Le935 million which they used in waste management , payment of staff salaries, repairs of vehicles, maintenance and purchase of a piece of land for a cemetery which had been a challenge to Kenema city.
Mr Momoh said the cemetery in Kenema Town had reached it limits and they had to purchase land and construct a road to it for another cemetery in Sembehun, a village about 12 miles off Kenema Town.
The cemetery project had been implemented out of a Le69 million KCC had received from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The financial year is already in the third quarter and KCC has gone for the past six months without government funding. But its Chief Administrator said all bank statements were ready to justify their utilisation of last year’s money.
(C) Politico 01/07/15
