November 29, 2021
By MOHAMED M. SESAY
The Public Account Committee (PAC) in Parliament chaired by the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Hon. Solomon Segepoh Thomas, has on Friday the 26th November 2021, commenced Public Hearing on the Mayor of the Freetown City Council Yvonne Aki Sawyer relating to matters raised in the Auditor General’s Report.
Addressing the Mayor during the Public Hearing at the Committee Room 1 in Parliament, the Chairman of the Committee Hon. Segepoh Thomas drew the attention of the Mayor to the content of the Auditor General’s Report. Hon. Thomas disclosed that the Audit Report highlighted certain projects implemented by other agencies on behalf of the council. He added that the implementing agencies as referred to in the Audit Report could not be audited.
“So we are bound to do our job as Members of the Public Account Committee to probe further. Sierra Leone is a country of Law and we are all subjected to the laws of the land. No one is above the law and nobody is going to use politic to hide from the law”, he admonished.
Hon. Thomas reminded that, the Public Account Committee is a Committee established by law to look at issues raised particularly in the Auditor General’s Report. He noted that within every Financial Year, government allocates funds to various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of which the MDAs are required to use those allocations in order to address concerns within their MDAs.
At the end of the year, he said the Audit Service Sierra Leone is also mandated by law to audit such allocation of funds to MDAs and later produces a report and hands it over to the Public Account Committee in Parliament.
The Chairman of the Pubic Account Committee therefore, intimated that they invited the Freetown City Mayor in order to seek clarity relating to the content of the Auditor General’s Report. He stressed that it is their duty as Members of the Committee after any Public Hearing, to do their report with relevance recommendations including prosecution at the Anti-Corruption Commission or fine as the case may be.
He continued that the committee cannot ascertain the truism of the Auditor General’s Report which is the more reason they invited the Mayor in order to have relevant answers and relevant documents that will inform the committee’s report.
The Chairman of the committee requested the Freetown City Mayor to submitted the following documents; the list of all relevant projects named in the Auditor General’s Report, name of the agencies concerned with the implementation of those projects, the funds that were used in the implementation of those projects, the funding agencies of the projects, relevant documents relating to the council’s resolution, the locations of the projects and any other relevant documents.
The Mayor of the Freetown City Council Yvonne Aki-Sawyer submitted the list of all the projects implemented in 2019. She also submitted three reports and two spreadsheets. Yvonne Aki-Sawyer also disclosed that the reports entail the Transform Freetown Project which was launched on the 24th January 2019 of which the keynote address was delivered by President Bio.
The Mayor added that the Transform Freetown is their development plan. She said donors did not actually present monies for such project but rather, the donors themselves implemented specific projects that interest them. She disclosed that the document presented to the committee also entails nineteen targets that are set out in order to achieve the Transform Freetown Project. Yvonne Aki-Sawyer also said each of the nineteen targets has a specific intervention which they are looking forward to executing. After the Mayor has submitted all the requested documents, the Chairman of the Committee Hon. Segepoh Thomas adjourned the Public Hearing sine die.