By Ragan M. Conteh
Parliament of Sierra Leone is believed to be seating on a scandalous ‘time-bomb’ and it is to to be exploded at any moment from now. Convincing sources within the precincts of Parliament have hinted this medium that, the house of laws is claimed to be very corrupt to the extent that the recent corruption scandal busted by journalists was just a tip of the ice-berg.
Our sources revealed that, during the headcount of workers in Parliament, some workers opined that, they saw people that were present during the headcount and they observed that they are not workers of Parliament, as according to them they have never set their eyes on those individuals.
“We were shocked to see people who have not been working with us in Parliament here lined up for headcount, this is another disturbing form of corruption that we have ever seen in Sierra Leone,” they said.
Workers furthered that, Parliament, apart from allegedly harbouring ghost workers, Members of Parliament in the various committees have complained severally about the non-provision of oversight funds to them by the administration.
Observers say, most of the oversight MPs, are allegedly being sponsored by various MDAs which they supposed to investigate.
It could be recalled that, in 2019 to 2020, Hon Ibrahim Tawa Conteh and Hon Clerk of Parliament were on radio castigating each other of being corrupt.
Hon Tawa allegedly accused the Clerk of Parliament Paran Tarawally of not utilizing funds allocated to Parliament properly.
While Hon Tarawally also accused MP Tawa of trying to misuse travels that are not statutory travels.
Years back, Hon Hindolo Gevao, was on record to have also accused Parliament of being corrupt, an action that brought about displacement of front seat MPs and back bench MPs resulting to loss of emoluments.
And a similar action was allegedly taken against Hon Ibrahim Tawa Conteh.
The current Parliament is also on record to have allegedly hired workers that have no job to do in Parliament but to receive colossal salaries.
Report also states that even the recruitment that they [some MPs the well] undertook were not done through the due normal recruitment process.