ACC Publicity Office: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 07 January 2021:
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) hereby informs the general public that in addition to the identification and recovery of all 47 Laptops that were stated to be missing in the COVID-19 Audit Report 2020, it has also received the sum of Le 220,000,000.00 (Two Hundred and Twenty Million Leones) in cash, as settlement of issues relating to the Forty-Seven Laptops being supplied to the National COVID-19 Emergency Response Centre contrary to the contracted specification.
There is a balance of Le 34,000,000.00 (Thirty-Four Million Leones) left to be recovered following a settlement for Le 254,000,000.00 (Two Hundred and Fifty-Four Million Leones).
The said money was paid jointly by a staff of NACOVERC responsible for logistics, the Head of Procurement at the Integrated Health Project Administration Unit (IHPAU) of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation and a businessman responsible for the supply of the items after they were given ultimatum to pay in full within a week or face the full consequences of the law.
The formula applied is the difference in the National Public Procurement Authority approved Price Norm and the actual price paid for the Laptops purchased (which was the most disadvantageous to the Settlers and three times more advantageous to the State) as opposed to the difference in the price; considering that many of the laptop computers supplied, though all not in accordance with the contracted specifications, but were confirmed by our IT Consultants to be better in quality and more expensive than those contracted for by IHPAU. All 47 laptops will now be returned to NACOVERC today.
We thank and appreciate Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) for their diligence and cooperation in helping to combat corruption in Sierra Leone and Parliament for their support.
For further enquiries on this and other ACC matters, please contact MORIS IBRAHIM KANTEH, Assistant Public Relations Officer on +232-78-832131 or via email info@anticorruption.gov.sl
What is really hard to get your head around, is the fact that, Bio is on record saying corruption is the main driver that has kept our country at the bottomless pit of under-development. Bio is not like any other Sierra Leonean. For crying out loud, this is the president of the country, straight out of the horse’s mouth. He identified the problem, and in his toolbox has the solution to this problem, makes you wonder what is stopping him from going after those corrupt individuals in his government. Is Bio a hostage of his own making? He is certainly displaying a behaviour like a hostage in orange jump suit with a gun over his head. Maybe someone who knows something about him, is telling him to read from a prepared script.
It is like corruption exists to keep the public that is advocating for change at bay. We Sierra Leoneans are sick to the teeth of this unchecked corruption in Bio’s government. The Sierra Leonean public is easily fooled. When they hear you talk about it, they feel you are doing something about it. So their concerns will be kicked to the long grass as they get on with their corrupt ways. Bio, was elected on a manifesto to fight this cancer that has brought our country not only underdevelopment, youth unemployment, bad roads, the worst health care in the West African region, and if we take into account children that die before they celebrate their fifth birthday, pregnant mothers that die trying to give birth and worst the RUF wars that killed thousands of our fellow countrymen and women, and some who have to live with amputation for the rest of their lives.
Sometimes you ask yourself how do these corrupt politicians sleep at night knowing how their actions, or the lack of it, is not only dangerous for the security of the state, but is undermining real development from taking place. Corruption also breeds secondary effects in which politicians compete in taking over the reins of government so they can enrich themselves. Real public service is relegated to poorly paid public officials like teachers, firefighters, police officers, nurses, refuse collectors, who do not get paid on time for their hard work.
While we welcome the recovery of these monies along with the laptops, the million dollar question is, who exactly are these corrupt officials within the PAOPA elite that made this backdoor deal after defrauding our nation? A few days ago, the civil servants who paid back $500 that was misappropriated under their watch had their names published publicly by the ACC press release. Why are we just being told now an invisible staff of NACOVERC and businessman paid back $22,000 out of what was stolen? Does the ACC thinks harboring corrupt PAOPA officials will in any shape or form help in the fight against corruption?
Not bad, but only peanuts. What’s about the Le 5.2 billion of travelling costs the president Maada bio spent on December 20th 2020, if you can trust the report in the Cokorioko from today?