By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
The Deputy speaker of parliament has defended parliament’s decision to refer the controversial Technical Audit Report to the Anti-corruption Commission for expert opinion.
Solomon Sengepoh Thomas, MP, cited constitutional provisions which he said conferred powers on Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to conduct investigations into documents submitted to it by the Audit Service Sierra Leone. However, the same law, he noted, did not limit the PAC in their mode of investigation.
“The committee is at liberty to invite experts to help us in the investigation and submit recommendations to the plenary,” he stated at a press conference held in the conference hall of the office of the Deputy Speaker on Wednesday.
Hon. Thomas, who is the Chairman of the PAC, alluded to several instances when some members of the public have alleged that documents of this nature might have been watered down when they reached parliament.
“It is in this direction that the committee allowed other agencies to come on board and help to investigate the issues raised in the report,” the Deputy speaker said.
The Technical Audit Report was authored by Audit Service Sierra Leone and laid before PAC for public hearing as the law demands.
It was a forensic audit conducted last year by a team of local and international auditors and it revealed that Sierra Leone lost US$1.036 billion in the last three years of the Ernest Bai Koroma administration to fraud and mismanagement by public officials. It was carried out on four sectors: telecommunications, civil works, energy and social security, and covering a period between 2016 and 2018.
The report has been topical and generated debates among the public, especially after the parliament criticized the decision of the Auditor General’s Office to release the report through the Ministry of Finance before presenting it to the Parliament.
Hon. Thomas informed journalists that the public has expressed divided opinions on the report noting that while some said it’s authentic, others said the report was riddled with errors and therefore “incorrect.”
Considering the operations of parliament, the Deputy Speaker said, the PAC would have to take its time to complete its work.
“At every session of parliament, the mandate of other members of the committee ends and new members come in except me as chairman and permanent member that have right to run commentary of the report,” he said.
It is against this backdrop, the deputy speaker went on, that the committee resolved to seek the intervention of other agencies of the state including the Anti- Corruption Commission to expedite the investigation of the report.
“At the end of their investigation, they submit to PAC the ACC findings which we will translate into a comprehensive report for the plenary committee in parliament,” he added.
Hon. Thomas then assured the public that parliament would no longer use its authority to silence other agencies of the state on issues of public importance, saying: “it is a disservice to the state.”
(c) 2019 Politico Online
