By Septimus Senessie in Kono
A month-long investigation by Politico has revealed an apparent mandatory bribe of 10% of school subsidies is paid to the Kono District Education Office in the east of Sierra Leone.
Documents shown to Politico and interviews with some head teachers and chairmen of School Management Committee (SMC) of various community primary schools ostensibly indicate that the Kono District Education Office subtracted 10% from the second and third term subsidies of the 2012/2013 academic year “as an unexplained commission,” one of the head teachers told Politico.
Many of the head teachers spoke off the records but some others were willing to speak on record.
The head teacher of the orphanage community primary school at Sandemanden community, said the supervisor of schools, Sahr Patrick Fillie demanded “10% from each of all the community primary schools who benefited from that allocation”. It is not clear how many schools are affected as the district council could not give numbers.
Massah Sillah further alleged that Fillie threatened “to omit the names of any community primary schools benefiting from school fees subsidies or turn them to ghost schools should they not honour the kickback before the arrival of the next school subsidies”. She said she was forced to pay Le350,000 to Mr. Fillie out of her school subsidy.
She complained that they were not told what the 10% was being paid for, adding that there was a new method that had been adopted by the Kono district education office to withdraw their fees subsidies. She alleged that they were asked by the Deputy Director of Education, Agnes Nkanku Kamara to first of all go to her office to collect a pay slip before the bank would allow them to withdraw their money. “This was new to us” Sillah said, adding that in the past only the head teacher of a school and the SMC chairman would go to the bank to collect the money.
She alleged that “this new method was implemented by them so as to find ways and means to get access to the 10%”.
The head teacher of Experimental Community Primary School, Bongalow also alleged that he got the name of his school deleted by one of the supervisors of schools whom he identified as Sahr Patrick Fillie “because I refused giving him the 10% out of the Le 1, 318,000 (one million, three hundred and eighteen thousand Leones) meant for the general maintenance of the school.” Kai Eric Jabba further alleged Fillie labelled his school to the Deputy Director of schools as a ghost or nonexistent school. He said that he challenged the DD and her staff with authentic documents signed and stamped on the letterheads of the district education office and the city council and the 2012/13 NPSE result. The head teacher said “my school is an existing school approved by your office,” he challenged, adding that the attempt to describe his school as “ghost school” was an act of “corruption.”
Sahr Patrick Fillie denied any wrongdoing. Speaking to Politico the supervisor of schools said he had no knowledge of the alleged act of deducting 10% from school subsidies and referred to the head teachers making such as “ill motivated school authorities” who had the names of their schools deleted and stopped from benefiting from the subsidies. Fillie threatened that his office would continue to delete names of more schools that proved “defiant”. He would not explain what he meant by “defiant”.
The Deputy Director of education, Kono district, Agnes N’kanku Kamara also denied any knowledge of the allegations. Sounding and looking testy, she threatened to “severely deal” with the schools that are making the allegations. “And I will ensure that we identify the names of all the schools that are putting the name of my office into disrepute and later recommend to my bosses in Freetown who transferred me here to deal with them one by one” she threatened.
Speaking to Politico at his office, the District Coordinator of the Anti Corruption Commission, Sahr Issiah Suluku confirmed to Politico that the commission had received similar complaints from “a good number of head teachers and chairmen of SMCs all alleging that the education office in Kono are deducting 10% from their fees subsidies.”
Suluku would not name the complainants for what he described as “fear of intimidation and more importantly not to prejudice our investigations”.
Politico 03/08/13
