By Ragan M. Conteh
The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Hon Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, has informed the media that the Ministry of Defence will face the public account committee in the coming days.
According to Hon Tawa Conteh, the defence ministry is to clarify on issues raised by the Auditor General’s Report (AGR).
He said the Ministry of defence and many other sectors have a lot of issues raised in the Auditor General’s Report which they are to clear.
He urged the defence to prepare before it faces the PAC for scrutiny.
On a related development, he stated that his committee has recovered over 40 billion old leones in tax arrears during the last three months.
He said these recoveries related to 2021 and 2022 audit periods.
The Chairman highlighted that the Committee focused on areas such as Corporate Taxes, GSTs, PAYE, and withholding taxes.
Regarding GST, the Chairman noted that the Committee had examined the cases of eleven taxpayers and had engaged both the Ministry of Finance and the National Revenue Authority (NRA) to assist in the inquiry process.
He pointed out that with this collaborative strategy, Hon Tawa Conteh revealed that the NRA had successfully recovered a substantial sum of “over 30 billion leones being recovered.”
The PAC chairman has also informed that the Audit Report submitted to Parliament by the Auditor General is the property of Parliament. “Let nobody call you to investigate anything from the Audit Report, it is Parliament’s responsibility to conduct investigations and hearings on this Report.” “If there is any issue that Parliament deems to be criminal or is in the opinion of Parliament and meets the requirements of other provisions or other legislations passed by Parliament, for which other bodies in governance or the executive or otherwise are responsible, in this case, parliament will refer to them.”
He added that it is not the business of any other institution or agency to start hearings or conduct hearings on this document afresh.
So if the Anti-Corruption Commission or any other body calls you, tell them the Deputy Speaker of Parliament has ruled on that and you are going to stay by that ruling.
Until and unless that rule changes, nobody can issue any summons, subpoenas or warrants you to do otherwise because the document belongs to Parliament, and nobody has any legislation that gives them power or authority over this Audit Report. But that except Parliament of Sierra Leone for which the constitution of 1991 gives enormous powers to carry out such functions”.