October 8, 2021
By: Aruna Kamara (BO)
Talking Drum Studio (TDS) Sierra Leone has organized a town hall meeting on the community scorecard on the theme “citizens and duty bearers alike have responsibility to ensure inclusive local governance and service delivery”. The town hall meeting has been held in Bo, Bombali, Pujehun and Tonkolili Districts.
Speaking at the town hall meeting at the YMCA Hall in Bo on Thursday 7th October, one of the Project Officers of Talking Drum Studio(TDS) Sierra Leone, Tommy McCarthy said that they had engaged duty bearers and set up 12 action or scorecards in four sectors; Security, Education, Agriculture, and the health sectors due to the gap identified in service delivery by the citizens.
Mr. Tommy explained that duty bearers agreed to have an action plan to deliver on the gaps identified by the citizens and they are in Bo to do a follow up on those actions set up by the duty bearers to see how far they have worked on their actions.
According to him, to a large extent especially in the health sector we were pleased with the move taken by a Civil Society Activist Regiana Kombe Kajue to ensure that the toilet in one of wards that was closed at the Bo Government Hospital has been opened and also other issues relating to allege sale of free health care drugs has been stopped through her engagement with the hospital management and the District Health Management Team.
He also said that out of the feedbacks from the CSO and the citizens, there is improvement in the attitude of the nurses to the patients, which according to him is good for the health sector.
Mr. McCarthy said “we want to achieve inclusive governance, accountability at local level and that the voice of citizens is very key in service delivery. They want to see an open door system for the CSOs in for instance the delivery of the free health care drugs. We want to see the involvement of the citizens and CSOs in the delivery of learning materials to the school to ensure that it reaches the beneficiaries”.
He further added “we will continue to follow up on the action of the duty bearers and we will be back next year to continue with the follow up.”
The Public Relations Officer of Civil Society in the Southern Region, Joseph Blackie, said that they had engaged the security on the bribery at the checkpoint and action has been taken to stop it , and that they had the full cooperation of the Anti-Corruption Commission.
Mr. Blackie noted that they also engaged the liquidator of My Coin on the verification of customers to ensure that the money of the people are given back but has not happened.
Some residents of Bo who attended the meeting to verify the actions of the duty bearers commended Talking Drum Studio Sierra Leone for their follow up meeting in order to ascertain the implementation of the actions.
Theresa Sesay said “if this kind of engagement continues in Sierra Leone duty bearers will become accountable for their actions”.