By Africa 24 newsman

In an efforts to recoup stolen monies from ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) including from local councils across the country, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament who doubles as the Chairman of the Public Account Committee in Parliament, Hon Ibrahim Tawa Conteh and his Public Account Committee (PAC) team have left for the provinces targeting local councils to government’s monies.

Provincial local councils will be giving account to the committee on their stewardship based on the 2021 and 2022 audit service reports.

The Deputy Speaker said his team would be looking at  management and accountability issues within the councils and what auditors had highlighted of MDAs’ monetary failures in their various reports to ensure that it never repeats again in the next fiscal year.

In the last two months billions have been recouped from various institutions of governance and the committee was left with  nothing but to chase government monies and deposit them into the consolidated revenue fund.

On Tuesday’s hearing at the New Administrative Building in House of Parliament, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Parliament Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh  discovered that Freetown City Council (FCC) were collecting some whopping sum of monies running into at least one billion old  leones of market taxes.

They found out that the councils only deposited eight hundred million old leones to the National Revenue Authority (NRA) account.

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Parliament who chaired the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh made serious accusations against tax collectors at local councils in Sierra Leone.

According to him, the collectors are using unauthorised receipt books and tickets to collect market taxes, thus diverting the funds for personal gains,  instead of depositing them in the council’s accounts.

On Tuesday’s hearing, the committee  questioned representatives from both the Freetown City Council (FCC) and the Western Area Rural District Council (WARDC) regarding issues raised into 2021 and 2022  Auditor General’s Reports.

Hon. Conteh assured that the corrupt practices of the tax collectors are the reasons accounting for local councils struggling to generate sufficient revenues for the state.

“I can authoritatively state that those collecting local taxes have their own receipt books and tickets, for which such criminal practice being seen as detrimental to the councils’ revenue collection efforts,” Hon. Conteh said.

He confirmed that there are lot of issues “of financial impropriety” raised in 2021 and 2021 reports that have to do with FCC.