By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
Le 50.4 billion is what the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) has budgeted to spend on rice for over 12,000 officers throughout next year. This is almost 60% of their entire budget for the year 2020, which is Le 92 billion in total.
To put this into context, the budget for rice alone for the SLP is bigger than the entire budget of the Ministry of Sports for 2020.l - Le 44 billion.
If this is not striking enough, then here is another figure: The Ministry of Lands is asking for just Le 6.2 billion. This is far less than one tenth of the SLP’s rice budget.
If you are shocked, angry or sad, wait until you know that the Le 50.4 billion is not even the most striking figure on the SLP's budget, especially so if your concern is Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV). Just Le320million is the amount the police want to spend on its Family Support Unit (FSU). Now, how do you feel?
The rice budget is more than fifty times what's budgeted for the FSU in 2020.
Why is this important?
This is important because this figure speaks a lot about the police force’s vision and commitment to deal with the vexing issue of SGBV, chief among which are rape and sexual penetration.
By their own figures, in 2018 the FSU received 12,052 reports of SGBV cases. This year from January to July they have received 6,784. There is no telling how many more cases would be added to these by the end of 2019.
This alone paints a grim picture which shows that the situation of SGBV has never been worse in Sierra Leone. Little wonder why President Julius Maada Bio had to declare a national emergency on rape and sexual penetration early this year.
So, why is the SLP not demanding more support for FSU? Baffling!
In the wake of the high rate of SGBV in the country, FSUs branches around the country have been on the front line in helping victims and pursuing perpetrators. In most cases they are overwhelmed by cases because of shortage of resources like personnel, vehicles, and, crucially, technical capacity.
The House of Parliament has gone a step further to help the FSU and the Police in their work. The passing into law of the amended Sexual Offences Act last month is a major revolution in the fight against sexual crimes in this country. This shows there is momentum and political will across all spheres to deal with this issue.
So why is Police not tapping into all these opportunities and at least commit a few billions to strengthen its position, instead of asking for more money for rice?
In a panel discussion organized by Plan International last week, Chief Superintendent of Police, Mira Dumbuya said that everyone responsible to fight against rape must be a step ahead by being proactive.
“If we are supposed to be protecting women and girls, we have to be proactive. Most of the time we are reactive and that should not be the case,” she said.
Dumbuya headed the FSU for ……………..……… years. Hardly anyone can know the realities around this issue better than her.
The alternative solution and the mathematics
In the build up to SLP’s budget presentation, there were calls for the FSU budget to be separated, a call SLP promised to consider.
The civil society group, Center for Accountability and the Rule of Law (CARL) has already done the groundwork and the mathematics to push a case for serious funding for the FSU.
A representative of the organization, Prince Bull, told Politico that a study they did in consultation with the FSU around the country showed that it will need over Le13 billion annually to be properly operational.
“What the FSU need to make it very operational is recurrent budget Le 8.1 billion, and for development and expanding the
FSU they will need Le 5.6 billion. It’s a total of Le 13.7 billion, this is an annual budget,” Bull said.
And the Police response to CARL’s study was: “That’s a huge chunk of our budget, as you can see rice alone takes almost 60% of our budget. But also, don’t forget, as they (FSU) are part of the Police they get things like fuel, impress, in terms of their travelling to investigate matters they get per diems,” Assistant Inspector General Patrick Johnson told the press after their presentation.
“The funds are not enough, we are managing with what we have, and this impacts all other units, not only the FSU,” he added.
Le 13.7 billion is just over 10% of the current budget the SLP is requesting for the 2020 financial year.
Moses Mambu Jnr., a civil society activist who followed this year’s budget hearings, suggested that the Police use around 40% of the requested sum for rice to invest in farming for the long term.
The Police response was: “We will take that into consideration, for now we want to focus on our primary responsibilities which are; protecting lives and properties and keeping law and order.”
This year government is aiming to invest big on agriculture. Ministry of Agriculture has announced a collaboration with the Military and the Correctional Service to go in to farming. Police can also join that scheme.
The aim is to produce 170,000 hectares of rice in the next three years.
The odd comparison
The supply of rice to the Military and the Police is tied to morale, so it is important not to downplay it. However, it is just easier to add the cost of a bag of rice to the salaries for every officer than to go through an expensive and cumbersome procurement process every month. This is in the case where we decide to spend exorbitantly on rice for them.
Police themselves admit that sometimes the hassle is too much for them to handle.
“We have pleaded with the Finance Ministry to take over this responsibility, but they have refused,” a senior Police officer said during the hearings.
Under normal circumstances, there should be no comparison between what the Police eat and what they demand to fight crimes like rape. But their FSU budget provokes that comparison.
The bad news is, as the price of imported rice continue to soar, the rice budget for SLP can only get bigger every year, all the more reason why we must find a sustainable solution to this issue, because we need to save all the pennies we can, to save our women and children from rape and sexual penetration.
And the Police should be reminding us and the government about that, the responsibility should not be the other way around.
(c) 2019 Politico Online
