July 8, 2021
BY UNCLE SANKARA
The fragile and battered institutions which were left behind by the former government of Ernest Bai Koroma in more than a decade have been transformed by the current government.
The specifics are available to showcase: a viable revenue generation institutions that now contribute financially in boosting our nation building effort to augment revenue.
In the past administration the norm was to siphon public funds and we are seeing how the current Anti-Corruption Commission is retrieving such looted funds to invest in vital state services.
I am a patriotic citizen with a civic responsibility to lavish praises where they are due. Over the years, it was only the middle and upper class that were privileged to go to India China and Ghana and other Western countries in search of medical checks.
Some humanitarian organizations have been rendering financial assistance to patients with infections not treated at home. Lamentably, a rundown of our belated history coupled with the availability of our natural resources would have been enough to have a well-equipped modern diagnostic hospital with trained and qualified medical personnel to head its operations as Ghana is today in our 60 years of independent.
If this has never happened, well, it is now beginning to happen without dependency to donors. The Anti-Corruption Commission is now only enviable to other nations of the world for its fast “catch”, but most of those brought forward to give an account over allegations of misappropriation of funds preferred to pay than going to court.
If the laxity under the former government would have been witnessed in the Bio’s led government, our nation would have been now in rubbles.
The billions of Leones which have been recovered by the ACC are now invested to build first class diagnosis hospital at Kerry town in the Western Rural district. The hospital when completed is expected to have all the departments befitting a modern hospital that will discourage other Sierra Leoneans from seeking medical attention elsewhere in the world. Kerry town which came to public view during the horrific Ebola period will soon be known as the center of one of the sub-regions most advanced medical centers.
The tendency is that if those looted monies where left uninvestigated, the inequality would have widened. Aristocracy and Bureaucracy would have been the order of the day and most Sierra Leoneans would have been driven by the desire for materialistic allures.
Who says President Bio has not adopted radical measures to ensure that the stolen finances are paid back for the generations yet unborn?
Another tangible reason to repudiate the arm chair critics are the revamping of the National Revenue Authority under the Bio administration.
One would have expected that the former officials of the NRA who were brought to book by the ACC would have freed themselves from blame. But alas, they negotiated to pay the monies fraudulently converted to the present ACC.
Comparatively the NRA of yester years is incomparable to the present. The. The NRA has contributed to minimization of inflation rate by a large margin says Bank Governor Professor Kellfala Kallon.
Suffices to say, before it was almost always about connections and NRA officials were discouraged in their operations. Today under a conscientious Bio led administration it is a drift from the past.