October 4, 2021
BY MOHAMED M. SESAY
The Executive Director of the Sierra Leone Roads Safety Authority (SLRSA) Ibrahim Sannoh has on Friday the first of October 2021, presented Le 30 Billion to the Ministry of Finance as part of their 2022 fiscal year budget projection. He also pleaded to retain 10% of revenue collected by SLRSA.
“Road safety work is not cheap we need money to run and the government should prioritize road safety as it has prioritized education”, said Sannoh.
Ibrahim Sannoh also noted that they are not a government sub-vented agency and therefore, many a time they are in the spotlight for several road crashes or related road issues from the general public. He added that often the recklessness of some drivers within Freetown pose a serious threat to other road users.
“We have seen vehicles parked and abandoned on the sides of the roads and you will see the recklessness of drivers portrayed across the country, you will see all manner of unethical conducts even by those who are educated and those who are not so we want to start addressing some of these issues in there 2022 fiscal year budget year plan,” he said.
He also informed officials from the Ministry of Finance that, the ease of traffic at Kissy Road, Lumley and other areas within the Central Business District of Freetown was a result of their intervention in hiring the services of Military Officers and the Police to embark on a project called operations “push behind” in most of the major Streets in Freetown.
Speaking on the improvement on the assessment on the collection of revenue, Sannoh explained that proper categorization of vehicles and driver’s license (DL) types, installation of ICT facility to aid revenue collection from vehicles licenses such as notification through SMS texting in respect of vehicles renewals and traffic fines, deletion of vehicles from database that have gone off the road.
He added that the installation of robust ICT facilities to aid revenue collection from drivers’ licenses such as points system in DL, introduction of biometric DL, to meet international standards of vehicles from databases have paid off.
The Executive Director also expressed hope about their deliverables for 2021 adding that, they have established robust safety committees in the four regions of the country which would coordinate and execute road safety programs in collaboration with the Authority.
In terms of revenue generation and resource mobilization, the SLRSA boss assured that they will contribute Le 10.2 Billion to the national revenue and mobilize other resources to facilitate their work.