By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
The Road Maintenance Fund Administration (RMFA) has recommended for any future road loan agreement to be focused on road repairing work in the country.
The recommendation happened during the annual budget hearing at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) in Freetown on Friday.
According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of RMFA Mohamed Kallon, for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021/2022, despite the huge funding gap and the increasing demand to fund road maintenance activities, they have made full repayment of the loan of One Hundred and Eight Billion (108 billion) old Leones that was obtained by the past administration from the Rokel Commercial Bank (RCB).
He said the same loan was also extended to the Sierra Leone Commercial Bank (SLCB) and Commerce and Mortgage Bank to pay for several road projects that were implemented by the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA).
He noted that RMFA together with SLRA have conducted Technical Training for Local Council Engineers for the maintenance of feeder roads in August of 2021. He also said his institution has procured motorbikes for all 22 Councils to enhance their Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) activities.
Kallon emphasized that RMFA approved huge amount of road maintenance programmes in 2021/2022, for which he said they have achieved 90% in mobilizing the resources, and 85% in disbursement for completed and verified works. He added that the administration has made funds available and disbursed a total of three hundred and twenty six billion (326 billion) old Leones to SLRA and the Local Councils for road maintenance works across the country.
He said they have revived the annual budget allocations to all 22 Local Councils after receiving their annual road maintenance projects/proposals and budgets. This he said came from the desire to get all of the 22 local councils engaged in their feeder roads maintenance programmes.
On short term deliverables for 2023, Kallon said they have designed capacity building programmes for local councils to better understand the requirements for implementation of road projects to increase value for money.
He assured of their continued engagement with SLRA to improve performance-based road contracts, thereby enhancing efficiency.
He spoke of having developed a strategy to improve the follow up process in monitoring road maintenance activities which he said will ensure strict adherence to the implementation cycle and by extension, improve the overall performance of the local councils.
He highlighted some of the challenges they face as an administration in income generation, and funding commitments for road projects exceeding the current Road Users Cost (RUC) receipts.
Kallon also cited the absence of any comprehensive data-set for vehicle licenses and registration within the borders of the country from Sierra Leone Roads Safety Authority (SLRSA), which he said makes it difficult to ascertain the percentage and available revenue accrued from SLRA’s operations.
He said RMFA would want government to consolidate funds for road maintenance that are coming into the country and put it in a special account under the auspices of the institution.
He requested that a percentage be set aside for the maintenance of roads and for MoF to support RMFA in financing major periodic maintenance activities that are costly. This he said will ensure a reasonable number of roads are maintained each year that will reduce the accumulation of maintenance backlog.
RMFA was established by the Road Maintenance Fund Administration Act N. 3 of 2010 for financing the maintenance of the core road network and to provide for other related matters. The objective of it is to set up an independent administration to ensure the proper, efficient, economic and sustainable management of the Fund dedicated to maintenance of the national road network.
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