Sierra Leone’s Anti-Graft body has exposed Sierra Leone Foreign Service for lacking what they referred to as “functional standards”.
They noted that their investigations into an alleged abandonment of post by Sierra Leone’s former High Commissioner to Ghana, Togo and Burkina Faso, Ambassador Osman Foday Yansaneh, has exposed risky practices in the management of public funds and also an absence of a systematic and appropriate monitoring of attendance in the country’s various foreign missions.
The ACC says they are of the opinion that many foreign employees are taking and still taking advantage of the lack of policy guidelines militating against bad practices including but not limited to staying away from their post for longer periods and continuing to receive salaries.
This recent revelation has exposed the state of affairs in our foreign service at a time when government is still continuing to open more foreign embassies across the globe and the appointment of more diplomats to serve the country.
In the 2020 budget alone government is investing hugely in rehabilitating foreign missions, chancery buildings and ambassador’s residence in Addis Ababa, construction works at Sierra Leone’s Permanent Mission in New York and the construction of a foreign service diplomat academy in Freetown.
This will cost Government whooping sums of monies and one is then tempted to ask why invest such sums of monies if systems are not in place to checkmate the operations of the Embassies and High Commissions.