The Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food
Security, Prof. Patrick Monty Jones was alerted to an incident at the MAFFS’
Stores at Kissy Dockyard where fertilizers for this year’s planting season were
stored prior to distribution.
The Minister immediately notified the Police and
accompanied by Madam Marie Conteh Jalloh Deputy Minister 1 and Mr Lovell
Thomas, Deputy Minister 2, S. T. Kamara, Director of Engineering and other Senior
Officials of the Ministry, made an unscheduled visit to the stores to ascertain
the nature of the incident.
In
what was clearly an attempt to give the impression that the consignment of
fertilizers was intact, the thieves took out bags of fertilizers from the
middle of the pile thus causing a hole, visible only from the top. In this way,
they made away with over 1,000 bags of fertilizers with an estimated street
value of over Le200, 000,000.00 (Two hundred million Leones).
Visibly
concerned, the Minister interviewed the staff assigned to the Stores but they
all claim that they had no knowledge of how the fertilizers got missing.
Claiming that the accounting for goods in the stores is an administrative
responsibility, the Engineer on site tried to absolve himself of any blame for
the fertilizers going missing.
This
matter came to the notice of the Minister when it was reported that a
lorry-load of fertilizer had been impounded and brought back to the Kissy
Dockyard stores for verification. The vehicle was not a MAFFS vehicle nor was
it recognized as one of the vehicles hired for the current distribution
exercise to farmers up and down the country.
The loading of the vehicle, a flat-bed trailer, was
what raised the alarm. The Police were alerted and the immediately invited to
the scene together with the Minister and his Deputies who summoned all staff at
the stores. After a brief interview with staff at the Stores, the Minister
ordered that the Managers on site, Security Guards and Storekeepers should be handed
over to the Police for further investigations.
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