Sierra Leone : As She Traverses Entire Country In 72 Hours... Sylvia Blyden Uncovers Breach of $200,000 Dubious AfCOM Deal

 The whirlwind nationwide tour by Honourable Dr. Sylvia Blyden, the new Minister of Social Welfare, Gender & Children's Affairs has confirmed that high speed Internet services with Call Center, valued at $200,000 that were supposedly installed by AfCOM Internet Service Providers at her ministry's district offices, are either non-existent or grossly malfunctioning in many districts. Our reporter was among local journalists who traversed the entire country with the female minister; traveling virtually nonstop over a period of 72 hours. 

In Kambia, Port Loko, Kenema and Bonthe, there was absolutely no internet service during the visit of the minister. In Bonthe and Port Loko, no effort had even been made to serve Internet whilst in Kenema and Kambia, the equipment were seen but with no service available.

At virtually all the locations other than Waterloo and Moyamba, the ministry staff bitterly complained the shabby service.

In Bo, it was a very heated war of words between the ministry's staff and the AfCOM technical team as the ministry staff openly accused AfCOM of only turning on the internet quality because of the inspection visit by Dr. Blyden. Every single staff member openly accused AfCOM of being deceptive whilst AfCOM later confessed that shabby installation without "conduit pipes" was responsible for poor quality.

Complaints of irregular service were also received in Pujehun which the AfCOM team confessed was due to poor work by their installation technician.

Meanwhile, authentic documents seen by this press house has confirmed that the September 9th 2015 proposal of AfCOM which formed the basis for their contract signed with the Ministry, has not only been grossly breached but the breach might result in Sierra Leone losing out on an expenditure of almost one million dollars meant to strengthen the protection of the children of Sierra Leone.

AfCOM had promised to take no more than 1 week each to install Internet at all district offices in each province. They were immediately paid around half a billion Leones last year when they signed the contract in September 2015. It is now April 2016 and there is not a single province that can boast of effecient Internet service from AfCOM.

This has created serious embarrassment to UNICEF who funded not only the Internet service but other aspects of the child protection programme. On the minister's trip, the UNICEF team traveling with the minister were at pains to try to convince journalists that they were on top of things in so far as the critical project was concerned.

We learnt that if by May 7th 2016, AfCOM cannot deliver the services, then the entire donor funded project will simply collapse.

"This is unacceptable. If this country loses out on critical financing because AfCOM breached the contract they signed in September 2015, it will be lamentable," the social welfare minister told journalists at Waterloo where she ended her inspection tour yesterday April 18th 2016.