As Health Ministry rejects DHS report, Le800 Million in limbo

Reports are that supervisors for the Demographic Health Survey attached to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation have vehemently protested the preliminary report of the DHS owing to dubious activities at Statistics Sierra Leone.

It has also emerged that the dubiety of senior management cabal at Statistics Sierra Leone has affected the DHS listing and will obviously affect data collection for such a viable survey. It all started with procurement malpractices during hiring of vehicles for the DHS in which the National Public Procurement Authority made an apt intervention to save the right procedures.

It is alleged that the Statistician General recruited a firm of his choice to issue the contract of collecting data for a survey in which donors and the government has spent billions of Leones. Enumerators were hired as long as they are willing to forgo fifty percent of their earnings for the exercise.

This has led to the recruitment of unqualified enumerators, most of whom are family members of top management cadre of SSL. Unemployed graduates who have applied for this exercise that was advertised in the local tabloids have expressed resentment as their applications were dumped for no good reason.

What has come out clearly is that the SSL management has reserved a whopping Le800 million, a booty that is expected to be shared among members of the management cabal.

Although leaks are that the erudite Minister of Finance Dr. Kaifala Marrah has vowed to implement the recommendations of the DFID consultant Dr. Pepper, who was assigned to undertake a review of the institution, the Anti Corruption Commission should mount a robust investigation into financial as well as other social overindulgence at SSL less donors withhold their contribution towards the 2014 Housing and Population Census.

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