In an effort to seek and promote the welfare of
citizens, President Dr Ernest Bai Koroma yesterday, Tuesday May 17 2016 summoned the
appropriate authorities at State House to update him on the current water
situation in Freetown, and also later received an Administrative Inquiry Report
on allegations of misconduct in the management of the GAVI Alliance Funds Part
1.
Updating the president on the ministry’s
immediate strategies in handling the current water crisis, the Minister of
Water Resources Momodu Maligie reported of repairing of leaking scour valve in
the Guma dam that had long been plugged and thus reducing the volume of water
from the dam; handing over of seven (7) water bowsers to Guma to supply water
to communities in the capital; installation/rehabilitation of water tanks and
bowser deliveries; network improvement to increase on water pressure to reach
communities on the extreme end of the network; construction of bowser
collection points for tanks to be installed at Mogegba, Grafton, has been
completed and 8000 liters tanks will be mounted and networked on the platform
today; special team for leakage detection and fixing is put in place and
operating mostly in the western part of the city where leakage challenges are
huge; development of smaller sources of water to augment the bigger sources;
development/rehabilitation of boreholes which out of the ten existing boreholes
only five can be repaired; communications and community outreach for the
communication of correct versions as against the propaganda theory on the
social media.
With the above strategies,
Minister Maligie said that there has been considerable improvement on the
availability and access to water in the capital, saying “it is expected that on
the completion of the collection point at Mogegba and the rehabilitation of
some of the boreholes, we will experience significant improvement in serving
communities living on the east end of the city.”
In another engagement, President Koroma received part one of the
Administrative Inquiry Report on the Allegations of Misconduct in the
Management of the GAVI Alliance Funds from the Public Service Commission (PSC).
According to Dr Max Amadu Sesay, the president’s directive to the PSC to look
into the GAVI Funds matter was in conformity with Regulation 14 of the Public
Service Commission Regulations of 1982 and Rule 11:32 of the Civil Service
Code, Regulations and Rules.
Dr Sesay said that after careful investigation into the
irregularity identified in the GAVI audit report, the Disciplinary Committee
has not found any of the nine (9) officers culpable. “On all the issues of
irregularity identified in the GAVI audit report, Your Excellency, I can report
authoritatively and without any fear of contradiction that the PSC Disciplinary
Committee was unable to establish that any of the nine (9) officers was
culpable,” chairman of the Commission Dr Max Sesay stated, adding that none of
those officers had executive responsibility for either the management or
disbursement of GAVI funds, and in fact, most of them had little or no
knowledge that their work was funded by GAVI.
Dr Sesay further stated in the report that the evidence available
to the Committee pointed unequivocally in the direction of compliance by these
officers with GoSL accounting regulations on the issue of Daily Sustenance
Allowance (DSA), which he said was admittedly at variance with GAVI standards
of financial management and accounting. On account of this, the Committee
according to Dr. Sesay, exonerated all nine affected officers and recommended
that all those officers who are below the statutory age of retirement be
reinstated in the service by the Director General of Human Resources Management
Office (HRMO) and deployed in accordance with their areas of specialty.
The Committee therefore recommended that the GAVI donors should
consider reviewing their policies or approach to managing projects in Sierra
Leone’s health sector, particularly in the area of financial management and
accounting.
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