By: Saidu Jalloh
With the ongoing budget discussion organize by the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) led by the project officer, Moses Martyn Bassie has presented 30 Billion New Leones as their budget for 2025 to expedite their work.
Before the hearing, the project officer, Moses Martyn Bassie used the opportunity to explain the mission and vision of NaCSA in which he explained the mission as to promote community based, demand driven and sustainable development activities leading to the alleviation of poverty, reduction in the threat of renewed conflict and improvement in the speed, quality and impact of development initiatives in corporation with other stakeholders, non -governmental organization, relevant line ministries, private sector partners and other interested parties in national development.
“The vision of NaCSA is to operate as a viable and exemplary institution for efficient and effective pro-poor service delivery and good projects governance that ensures meaningful engagement and personalization of the benefits of development by citizens, especially vulnerable groups,” Mr. Bassie explained.
He recommended to the Ministry of Finance to disburse their budget in timely manner because of recurrent and counterparts funds. He also pleaded with Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Planning and Economic Development to leverage NaCSA’s resources mobilization efforts to increase funding base and expand program coverage by creating communication linkages to prospective donors.
He furthered that the government should facilitate the establishment of staff welfare arrangements for NaCSA, revisit the budgeting cycle to allow earlier distribution of budget call circulars in other to enhance presentation quality and timely processing of associated documentation.
Moses Martyn Bassie highlighted the achievement of NaCSA in 2023-2024 in which he described as national development deliverable. He said they had achieved in supporting the “Feed Salone” initiative by providing cold storage, vehicles to support aquaculture, and that 109 acres of Boli land rehabilitated, 136.83 km of feeder roads rehabilitated linking farmers to markets, three bridges (12m,64.9m,64.2m) constructed and grain stores and ancillary facilities constructed.
He maintained that rural water supply networks in RGPs, 7 Model markets were constructed and equipped in RGPs, 25 power tiller, cassava and sweet potato processing machine distributed, 350 goats and 350 sheep supplied in RGPs and 88,000 fingerlings distributed in 7 RGPs.
He underscored that Ministry of Agriculture-FSRP and NaCSA intended to enrol districts in their development plan and they had paid a total of 12,000 to 12 districts.
Moses Martyn Bassie also added that NaCSA like any other institution have challenges and these challenges had delayed their deliverables.
In that regard, he mentioned that the institution increased interest and uptake of service bearing more pressure on available resources, delay in the disbursement and shortfalls in government funding (counterpart and direct) affecting timely achievement of programs target, mobility to access difficult terrains nationwide for delivery of service.
Adding that staff welfare remains a critical concern impacting on employee morale ( eg. Salaries not reflecting current exchange rate, insurance covers for accidents, health care, workmen’s compensation, severance benefits).
