Repercussions of APCs job for the boys
Two consecutive editions of the New Citizen newspaper made interesting reading during the week just past. It must be remembered that the New Citizen newspaper is the unofficial mouthpiece of the ruling APC government. Its previous owner and managing editor is the current minister of information and communication under President Ernest Bai Koroma and he not only travels quite frequently with his Excellency, but here at home he is almost always with him. For that reason the New Citizen speaks from within the corridors of power. Its Wednesday May 19 edition the paper carried the following three inch front page headline:- “SHAKE UP AT NRA.†There was a photograph of a beaming charming Acting Commissioner-General Haja Kala Kamara at the side of the headline. Was it a case Nero fiddling while Rome burned, I wondered?
The story behind the headline was that 59 previously sacked employees of the Authority out of a total of 150 were to be interviewed for re-engagement. These people were part of the mass employment of people in 2008 that had allegedly supported the APC in its campaign for power and were being compensated. The National Revenue Authority was directed to employ them with no regard to whether there were existing vacancies in the Authority or whether they had in fact been budgeted for. But what did that matter; they had supported the party to power. Now the Authority had discovered that the random employment of these people had made a deep impact on its wage bill and in a rash sacked the whole lot. That must have been followed by a lot of grumbling perhaps with veiled threats of what could be the consequences in 2012.
That may just be the beginning; the same unplanned mass employment must have taken place within the National Power Authority, Guma Valley Water Company, not to mention the mighty Ports Authority and other parastatals. It must be remembered that some of the parastatals can hardly run at a profit while others are being constantly assisted with donor money for development. But what did the APC care about that? It had overzealous activists on its hands and to them that is all that mattered. And now Nemesis has stuck its head up and the chicken are coming home to roost, it may surprise readers to learn that most parastatals now have deputy executive heads recruited, rather selected from the long list of people from the Diaspora. Many of these people were reported to have sold their property in the United States in particular; whether there was a Quid Pro Quo or not only the APC leadership or the chief executive in the office of the Diaspora can tell.
That was not the end of the New Citizen story regarding the NRA; the papers Friday May 21 edition carried another headline, “HEADS TO ROLE AT NRA†This time it was quoting the chairman of the NRA board in a statement before a Parliamentary Oversight Committee where he is alleged to have said that the Authority would soon go bankrupt because it was supporting a lot of dead wood. That there were people in that establishment (and from the forgoing in other Agencies) who were simply collecting salaries at the end of every month without any input into the system. What a revelation! How disappointing for a leadership that promised to run this government like a business; look at the behavior of a lot of people he has placed in positions of trust, No wonder there is disenchantment and grumbling everywhere and I don’t mean within the opposition ranks either.
Readers, does it not sound ridiculous and idiotic for a newspaper to suggest that some people in the top hierarchy of the opposition SLPP would go to an undisclosed house around up gun to hold a secret meeting when each of the people named has a dwelling house and compound large and secluded enough for any private meeting? Readers will have no difficulty in identifying the newspaper that has become notorious for such gimmicks, which of course is the African Champion.Â
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