By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has uncovered numerous administrative and financial breaches within the Freetown City Council management. ACC made the discovery as part of a just concluded systems review on the council.
Among many other deficiencies, the report found out that the council had no constituted audit committee, no fleet management policy, no fuel distribution policy and a backlog of salary payment of some 71 staff who were paid under the minimum wage from 2014 to 2018 - racking up a debt of over Le 511 million on the council.
“We are doing this for all MDAs, two weeks back we just came from Kono where we did a review on the Koidu New Sembehun City Council. We did a thematic review. We can do a holistic as well as a thematic review. For Freetown City Council, we did a holistic review, wherein we looked at all areas,” Muctar Manansu Conteh, Systems Analyst at the ACC, said during the launch of the report on Thursday.
This report was done by the Prevention Department at the ACC. As part of their broader mandate, the department has the responsibility of doing a quarterly review on the systems and processes of public bodies like FCC and advises them on possible loopholes that they should cover to prevent corruption.
The scope of this report ranges from 2014 to 2018.
“We took about eight months to do this review even though this went beyond the timeline because we have a mandate to do a system review on MDAs every quarter. By right, [within] four quarters we are supposed to do four reviews, but based on the conditionalities and constraints to get information back and forth, that is why we had so many challenges,” Conteh added.
As part of the many recommendations, ACC said the council should pay backlog of salaries to the 71 staff who were paid under the minimum wage. A fleet management policy and fuel distribution policy should also be developed.
As a result of lack of proper systems, institutions also owe the council up to Le 249 million in revenues for parking spaces within the municipality. The ACC report recommends the formation of a debt recovery committee to gather these monies and properly account for them with valid receipts.
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Mani Koroma, urged the council to take the recommendations seriously.
“I want to encourage the FCC administration to look in to all the issues that were presented. This is not an exercise that should be taken lightly,” he said.
During the process of compiling the report, FCC were consulted to give their input on the recommendations, which they did. As per ACC law, FCC now have three months to start implementing the recommendations or risk facing consequences from the anti-graft body.
The ACC law also makes provision for FCC to inform ACC within one week about possible recommendations that they may not be able to fulfill.
The Acting Head of Administration at FCC, Bangalie Foday Marrah, told Politico later that they are willing to implement all the recommendations that were made.
“I am not sure if there is anyone of these recommendations that we will not be able to implement, because before this time they had made a previous presentation in which we made input and we also did follow up so we can understand ourselves,” Marrah said.
Conteh from the ACC also expressed similar sentiments. “All of them (recommendations) are urgent. I don’t expect them to write us back, according to section 8(ii), to say we can’t implement some of these recommendations, because there is no external force that will hinder their progress,” he said.
The Deputy Mayor of the council, Councilor Osman Koroma said during the launch that the ACC process will help mitigate corruption in the council and “build the capacity of the council to successfully achieve their goals.”
Despite their seeming willingness to implement the recommendations, Marrah said they will find it difficult to implement recommendations like the payment of the Le 511 million backlog of salaries.
“Once the process gets started, it is not about doing all of it in three months because we are financially challenged. Our capacity in terms of resources is challenged because our daily expenses alone, especially on cleaning the city, is very serious. But what is important is to get this thing started,” he said.
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