Saa Emerson Lamina
By Aminata Phidelia Allie
The Mayor of Koidu/New Sembehun has reacted angrily to his council being ranked the worst performer in the presidential performance contract assessment at State House on Tuesday.
The assessment says the Makeni City Council is the performer while the Koidu/New Sembehun council and the Kono District Council were ranked worst.
Saa Emerson Lamina blasted the assessment saying "the result cannot be unconnected to hate, malice and rancour" which he said "is very very clear in the outcome of the result".
He told Politico that "the very first thing to look for is the financial transparency...as I talk to you now, we are among the nine councils out of 19 that are presently qualified for first quarter disbursement [and] we have received an unqualified audit report in 2013".
The mayor went on: "there was nothing like public toilets, we now have well tiled and furnished public toilets there. These are great indicators of what we can do and the capacity that we have in managing our own source revenue" he told Politico.
He said those who did the assessment went with them into the field and saw all what the Koidu/New Sembehun council did "so for me to be the last in unimaginable".
He blamed the negative ranking on internal party squabbling at the presidency which has escalated outside of it and pitted state functionaries against each other.
Meanwhile State House Chief Of Staff, Dr. Richard Conteh says three ministries did not have their performance contracts with the president assessed for 2013 because “the ministers failed to show up for the peer review”.
Speaking at the same 2014 performance contract signing at State House, he said finance, education and tourism could not be assessed in the absence of their ministers and deputies.
While the finance and education ministers were not present, tourism minister Peter Bayuku Conteh was present and was nevertheless called upon to sign his performance contract for 2014.
There has been no reaction from the ministers as to why they refused to cooperate with the team, as alleged.
After the assessment, ministry of water resources was pronounced the best performing ministry for 2013, followed by health and defence.
Even though the chief of staff refused to announce the worst performing ministries, document seen by Politico shows that labour was the worst, with political affairs and works closely following.
The report highlighted inadequacy and incompetency in state institutions, and raised the issue of weak internal policies which it says were affecting performance.
Addressing the audience that comprised ministers, heads of parastatals and council heads and administrators, among others, President Ernest Bai Koroma said “appropriate action” would be taken against non-performers because “I warned you all last year”.
He said such action would send a signal to others that “contracts signed at State House are serious contracts and must be adhered to”. He promised to also investigate the poor performance of tertiary institutions like the Northern Polytechnic and the Freetown Teachers' College which were rated the worst performing public tertiary institutions with Njala University coming tops.
The president applauded the team “for naming and shaming” ministries, department and agencies that have not performed well, saying “we are in a process of reviewing the public sector".
(C) Politico Online 25/03/14
