By Musa Paul Feika
The deputy speaker of in the Sixth Parliament of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, has ordered the Director of Road Maintenance Fund Administration (RMFA) to stop disbursing monies to the Sierra Leone Road Authority (SLRA) for brushing of highways across Sierra Leone.
The deputy speaker said that should be done by the city council, stressing that he has ruled and assured that if RMFA did so again, they will have themselves to blame.
Hon. Conteh gave this order on Tuesday, June 11, 2024 at the New Administrative Building in the House of Parliament when the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was probing and looking into the 2022 Audit Report.
The deputy speaker assured that the SLRA has a lot of work to do rather than focusing on brushing the highways.
The PAC chairman assured that if the RMFA issued money in this regard they are going to refund the money to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
He cited Standing Order (SO) 42 emphasising that as chairman of the PAC, his ruling is final.
Speaker Conteh added that brushing the various highways including the Waterloo, Bo, Makeni, Pujehun, Kambia, among other highways should be done by local councils.
He instructed the SLRA to focus on constructions of road and bridges, the marking of roads and cleaning drainages and other activities.
Hon. Conteh said brushing of highways by SLRA is adversely affecting their work and also admonished them to make sure nobody build structures on the right of way without expressed permission from the SLRA.
Hon. Tawa disclosed that brushing, maintenance and responsibility for dirty roads should be done by the council concerned.
‘Brushing of highways including Waterloo, Bo, Makeni Pujehun, Kenema, Kambia among others is the responsibility of the councils. If I see any payment in the next audit report on brushing of highways disbursed by the RMFA to SLRA they will have themselves to be blamed.’
Thankfully, he said he is going to be PAC chairman for the next four (4) years.
According to the Deputy Auditor General, Morie Lansana, during audit verification exercise on road projects, they observed and discovered that maintenance works at several locations were completed, while others were almost at the completing stages.
Some roads, Morie said, were far for completion though the completion timeline had elapsed, disclosing that the audit team interviewed selected council engineers and it was revealed that RMFA is yet to make payment to the contractors though payment requests were submitted to them to complete the works.
The deputy auditor general added that supervision and monitoring of maintenance works by SLRA and local councils were inadequate even though the country had provided RMFA for every contract awarded.
Before the local councils undertook the rehabilitation of roads, Lansana said engineers must have prepared a confidential Bill of Quality (BOQ) that contains the estimated breakdowns and total costs of maintenance, stressing that the objective of preparing BOQ is to assist Procurement Units to determine the estimated bill price for the appropriate procurement method, be it BOQ, among others.
Mr. Lansana said the estimated bill price tendered by most contractors who won the contracts were the same as the council’s confidential BOQ.
He assured that the content of the BOQ were copied and pasted from previous method works including on certain items which he said were not applicable to the present works being done.
He said funds were transferred by the Road Maintenance Fund Authority (RMFA) to the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA), adding that the audit team conducted physical verification exercises for funds being transferred to the SLRA to capture the following thematic areas including flash flood, drainage cleaning, construction of retaining walls at Sawula, Kissy, and the maintenance of bridges.
Lansana noted that they observed construction of side drainages and retaining walls at Sawula, Kissy in Freetown.
Though the SLRA has been paid for the full contracts being awarded, the works were not satisfactorily done as most of the retaining walls were not backfilled as specified in the contract.
Talking on drainage cleaning, the deputy auditor general said contracts were awarded to different companies for the surface and drainage cleaning along selected roads in the Freetown Municipality totalling NLe4,598,500.
He said it was revealed that some of the drainages were cleaned only once, instead of for a period of 12 weeks which was supposed to run from May to August 2022 as stated in the contract agreement.
The audit team discovered that potholes were not properly covered and shaped and as a result some of them have reopened.
He said they discovered that the materials the contractors used were not in accordance with the contract agreement as concrete was used in some roads, instead of asphalt and discovered that most of the concrete fillings are damaged.