By Ragan M. Conteh

An MP of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party, Hon. Mustapha Sellu, has called on the government to help the National Revenue Authority (NRA) to have a single administrative building “instead of them continue to rent office spaces all over the place.”

He made the appeal on Thursday 31st October 2024 at the new Administrative Building in Parliament.

Hon. Sellu said NRA has been spending more than one million dollars on renting office spaces across the country.

He said the authority had started an eight percent payment for the construction of a state of the art-building, but since then the said project had been stalled, a model he said was not the best way to do.

Hon. Sellu however urged the revenue authority to partner with a company that might loan them to build an office for themselves. “They would later use rental funds being generated from the building to pay back the loan.”

In another development, the Hon member of Parliament from Kambia district, Abdul Karim Kamara, referred to the Sierra Leone’s standards Bureau as “death-trap.”

He claimed that the Bureau does not have the institutional capacity to carry out its work.

He said there are a lot of substandard goods sold across the country for which the bureau hasn’t the capacity to haul off those counterfeited goods.

Also the eader of the opposition All People’s Congress APC, Hon Abdul Kargbo said  there are a lot of expired products seen across the country partially because the Standards Bureau is not doing much of its work as it is  expected of them by the public.

Picking on the NRA appointee, Hon Kargbo said the authority is announcing new taxation on businesses but  doesn’t collect taxes or funds as expected by the public.