Sierra Leone Suspended – Finance Minister to come clean
Recent report which suspends Sierra Leone from the Extractive Industry social club shows the incompetency of the country’s current Finance Minister, Kaifala Marah (in photo).
The Minister, who in the past held the position, Secretary of State as well as the chairman of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), was simply tasked to provide expertise in regulating transparency over the quantum of resources coming into government coffers. Marah’s tenure, and subsequent aftermath leading to the suspension of the nation in its’ kimberlitic process, has verified that he is unfit to steer the nation’s economic resources.
The establishment of the transparency regulatory mechanism, which in turn is to checkmate returns of the extractive minerals in the world stems from the downward mobility and widespread mismanagement provoking civil and foreign unrest over these resources.
Findings of the EITI are that, metric flow of resources are unaccounted for, or better said empirical evidence shows that the account book of government seem twisted and imbalanced with the records of Mining Companies’. Strings of allegations point fingers to anomalies in the way proceeds are handled thus contravening the spirit of the transparency initiative.
Quite recently, His Excellency President Ernest Bai Koroma’s launching of the National Mineral Agency (NMA), which is aimed at injecting stimulus in his government’s drive to improve the middle man power level of his people through the extractive mining industry, seems to be a move in the right direction. If this is true, the spirit of HE’s policy statement of turning the nation around thus jokes with continuing entrusting Kaifala Marah with such huge responsibility when he has proven incapable.
By Mohamed Kabbah Turay
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