The Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) Chief Minister, David Moniana Sengeh, has accused various mosques and churches, and Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) of stealing electricity by not regularly paying up their bills.
He also shifted the “blame game” on family members and relatives for alleged illegal abstraction of electricity, something he has been seriously mocked by the public “as irresponsible.”
“They are the ministers stealing our electricity money donated to the country to boost the power supply; how can he blame the mosques and churches?” said a resident in Freetown.
Chief Sengeh made the statement on Tuesday 30th April 2024, during government’s usual press briefing held at the Ministry of Foreigner Affairs and International Cooperation, at Tower Hill in Freetown.
Earlier, The Electricity Distribution Supply and Authority (EDSA), said they had been running at loss as they’ve not been receiving the amount of money on electricity in return to energy supply.
Chief minister assured that the fight against electricity is a holistic, adding that the government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Finance (MoF) had rently paid NLe17,000 to Karpowership to supply electricity to the people of Sierra Leone, an effort to keep the city on light.
But he admitted that the government of Sierra Leone would have to to pay 48 million dollars.
Since 2018 when the ruling party took over governance, they had paid seventy million dollars, he disclosed.
He agreed on the fact that for the past weeks there is darkness.
He called on all Sierra Leoneans to be aware of their responsibility admitting that it’s only the citizens who should come together to make and change Sierra Leone.
Deputy Minister of Energy butrresed a point that the EDSA needs to be reformed thus disclosing that they are working hard to ensure that there is stable electricity supply in the country.
He said most of the engineers and contractors working for EDSA are Sierra Leoneans, not foreigners, but they illegal connecting abstracting electricity which they are not paying for it.
The Deputy Minister of energy assured that they are currently reviewing the Electricity Act of 2008.
The new act, if reformed, will bring in punitive measures to be taken against those who are in the habit of illegal stealing electricity