Dr Sam Sesay, Minster of Agriculture
By Mustapha Sesay & Crispina Taylor
The Sierra Leonean tax payer will have to pay US$15 million in debt, essentially in futility, thanks to a “failed” project implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, it was revealed on Tuesday.
The Agriculture ministry`s failure to deliver convincingly on its recently concluded Small Holder Commercialization (SHC) project, which was bankrolled in part by an Indian government-funded loan, means the country has achieved virtually nothing from the agreement, MPs said during a hearing by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in parliament.
Senior officials, including the Permanent Secretary at the Agriculture ministry, were summoned to the hearing which was held in a conference room in parliament.
About 80 percent of Sierra Leoneans are involved in the agriculture sector, according to official statistics, and two-thirds of the population which does the actual farming is engaged in subsistence practice. This means they barely live from hand to mouth.
The Small Holder Commercialization program was designed to provide this category of the population with the opportunity to be engaged in mechanized farming with the use of tractors and other machines, with the goal of increasing their productivity.
265 tractors procured for the SHC project, for instance, only functioned for less than a year, the MPs found, among several other anomalies.
As part of the project, nearly 200 Agricultural Business Centres (ABCs) were constructed across the country to serve as centers for the farmers to do their businesses like selling of their produces. But Komba Koydeyoma, deputy chairman of the Public Account Committee, said the ABCs turned out to be “white Elephants” as there were no business activities there.
“The project did not fulfill the original spirit and to me it was failure,” Koydeyoma said, adding that implementation of the project was only on paper and never got to be practicalised.
Because of the Agriculture ministry`s “failure”, the country would now have to pay $ 15 million in debt, he lamented.
Edward Martin Kargbo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, was left virtually dumb when challenged by the chairman of the committee, Cherno Bah, to say whether they consider the whole project a success or failure. The PS only managed to say that there were considerable improvements in the gains made in the project as, he claimed, there were enough local food stuff in the market. He also insisted that some of the tractors procured were still functioning.
Interestingly though, it turned out that the ministry hasn’t contributed a “single cent” to the repayment of the loan, yet the PS revealed that part of the money allocated them for the project was still in their account at the First International Commercial Bank. He said they were hoping to use part of it to repay the loan.
The PAC chairman Chenor Bah, who is also deputy speaker in parliament, demanded from the representatives from the Agriculture ministry to furnish the committee with the needs assessment report and details of the loan agreement. He said they were going to ensure that all ministries, departments and agencies accounted correctly for all their activities and be held responsible for any failure in implementing their projects.
© Politico 25/02/15
