By Ralph Sesay
Former President Koroma has urged President Julius Maada Bio to take a decision as to whether to continue maintaining the subsidies on electricity, fuel, rice and education, etc. or remove them and send the citizens deeper into poverty.
“For my government, there was nothing to debate. We saw no reason to remove subsidies and we preferred to incur the wrath of development partners than place more burden on our poor citizens,’’ Koroma noted.
The former President disclosed that even though every single one of these  subsidies placed a heavy burden on the economy, there were calls for them to be discarded, but the after-effect of ending these subsidies will be a vicious cycle of poverty, which would spiral the poor living conditions of Sierra Leoneans in a downward trend.
Koroma highlighted critical financial obligations which, according to him, were required to maintain the peace and stability in recruiting and maintaining officers and men of the Police, Military and Fire Force services, the civil service, including teachers and health workers, amongst others.
Ernest Bai Koroma drew the attention of President Bio to the fact that the subsidies in various social services sectors cushioned the effects of poverty in a prompt manner that can be likened to his own ‘Prompt Action On Poverty Alleviation’ (PAOPA)
‘’This means my government had already been on a pathway which you may now be comfortable to emulate as far as poverty alleviation is concerned. For my government we were willing to incur the wrath of some of our key partners than compromise on our obligations to help reduce the state of poverty of our citizens.’’
Whether the President would heed to the advice of his predecessor on maintaining these huge subsidies on very critical social services sector or not remains a million dollar question.
In his inauguration speech, the President has made commitment to wage war on corruption, indiscipline and poverty, using a disciplined leadership approach. Bio has already stated that subsidy to higher education is unsustainable and that his government will improve on the Government Grant-in-Aid policy and introduce student loans to deserving students to access higher education.
This is already a pointer that the President would distance himself from such huge subsidies allocation to critical social service sectors that have not impacted on the lives of ordinary Sierra Leoneans.
Very close to the March polls, the International Monetary Fund had to withhold funds allocated to the country through the Extended Credit Facility program because the Koroma government had reneged on a key condition to remove subsidy on rice and fuel.
Sierra Leoneans are waiting to see what approach the Bio-led government would use to tackle poverty which remains very much endemic in the country. There are very high expectations within the general public that the new administration would quickly turn around the economy.