By Prince Musa
The police Criminal Investigations Department are investigating the alleged disappearance of Le40 million from the Kenema District Health Management Team (DHMT), Politico has learnt.
The money, according to officials, was meant for the just-concluded mass polio immunisation campaign.
At the centre of the investigation is the Finance Officer of the DHMT, Edward Senessie, from whose office the money was allegedly taken.
Police say three people, all of them nurses working for the Kenema Government Hospital, are being treated as suspects.
The nurses, two women and a man all attached to the office of the hospital’s matron, are said to have access to the building housing the Finance Office of the DHMT. They were briefly detained and released on bail.
Senessie told Politico that he had withdrawn Le 60 million from the Rokel Commercial Bank two weeks earlier and kept the money in his office. He said he later discovered that Le 40 million was missing when he needed the money as part of the anti-polio campaign which ran from October 28 to 31.
Senessie said the cabinet where he had kept the money had not had a lock on it for some time now.
The Hospital Matron, Alima Vangahun, denied knowledge of anything about the missing money other than what she had been told by her staff. She told Politico that she did not know anything about the money and that she was only informed by her cleaner and later invited by the police to make a statement.
The District Medical Officer, Dr Mohamed Vandi, defended the idea of the Finance Officer keeping such a huge amount of money in his office despite the risk of theft. He said the money was meant for use as part of activities during the polio campaign, and that the official could not afford to be going to the bank during the course of the exercise.
He also noted that since the DHMT did not have a permanent building of its own, it had to be housed in the hospital’s facility.
According to the media officer attached to the community relations department of the Kenema Police Division, Brima James Musa, fingerprints of the suspects and other unnamed people have been taken to Freetown for examination.
He said “very soon” the police would come out with their findings.
Sierra Leone has one of the highest burdens of child diseases. And over
90 percent of funding for such crucial mass child immunisation campaigns come from foreign donors.
Copyright (c) Politico 2016
