By Crispina Cummings
The appropriation sub-committee on finance on Friday ended their probe into the budget expenditure last year by ministries, departments and agencies. Approval for their 2013 budget will be debated next week.
However scrutiny of the expenditure by the Road Maintenance Fund of last year’s budget was suspended on the grounds that the vote comptroller and executive director Abdul Karim Kalokoh could not account for Le 5 billion.
Kalokoh appeared before the committee on Wednesday for the fourth time, but was stood down and asked to bring a draft of their financial document and an extra bank statement, as the sub-committee rejected the draft through the overall finance chairman, Hassan Sheriff, MP, and the sub-committee chairman, Claude Kamanda, MP.
The committee said there were many loopholes in their figures prompting Shefiff to ask the executive director that they had no choice but to suspend their budget until there was clarification over the Le 5 billion.
He said they would have to invite the transparency and works committee for a final hearing and conclusion to know if their 2013 funds should be released to them or withheld.
In a press release issued yesterday the Road Maintenance Fund maintains that the draft documents presented to the Parliamentary Appropriation Sub-committee on Supply “was not aimed at ‘Misleading the Committee’ rather; it was to give the committee an insight to the prudent financial management of the fund as have been recently audited by The Audit Service of Sierra Leone.”
