By Ragan M. Conteh
The Oversight Committee on Sport, which is chaired by Hon. Alusine Conteh, yesterday 4th December 2020 exposed the incompetency of the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Sport, Sumanu Adikali, who strangely failed to submit comprehensive documentations of what his ministry and sectors spent.
This was discovered during the ongoing Sub-Appropriation/Committee deliberation on Supply in Parliament, wherein different Committees vetted financial expenditures of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).
What is heartrending, during the hearing, was that the Ministry of Sport, in spite of the huge collections of revenue from the National Stadium Pitch, Stadium Car Park, Stadium Hostels, Gym and Swimming Pool sectors, among others, no record of revenue generation was submitted to Members of the Parliamentary Committee on Sport.
The Committee also discovered that the Permanent Secretary is new and cannot explain how huge monies, disbursed by the Ministry of Finance, were spent. Added to this is the fact that the Committee was not furnished with proper report on how allocations to the ministry were spent.
Since the documents, submitted by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary to the Committee, were not properly collated, and monies not properly accounted for, the Committee requested that the minister be stood down.
The Chairman of the Sport Committee, Hon. Alusine Conteh, requested explanation for monies and revenue collected from the Stadium Pitch, Hostels, Car Park payment and all other sectors in the ministry.
The Chairman also requested that the auditors, in the ministry, should submit job schedule; the procurement officer should also submit his job schedule and how contracts have been awarded to the Ministry of Sport.
Upon listening to the deceptive explanation, from the officials of the Ministry of Sport, the Chief Whip of the ruling Government, Hon. Dickson Rogers, said the manner in which the Sport Ministry conducted themselves and the deceiving documents submitted to the Committee, he ordered the Chairman of the Sport Committee to stand down the Permanent Secretary for him to go and prepare the haphazard documents submitted and bring same back to the Committee on Monday 7th December 2020.
The documents, submitted before the Committee, are so scantily developed that MPs were unable to understand what was in the documents in spite of the colossal allocations.
According to the Chief Whip, Hon. Dickson Rogers, if the ministry’s tycoons failed to present corrected and well collated documents to the Committee, their 2021 budget allocation will be withheld.
Hon. Charles Conteh, from Bombali District, also expressed dissatisfaction for the haphazard accounting of donor funds and government allocation by the Ministry of Sport without proper supporting documents.
The entire House divided itself into Committees to look at the financial expenditures of the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for the Financial Years 2019 and 2020.
The Committee is also responsible for diagnosing the challenges and successes of MDAs and proffer solutions/recommendations and report in the Well of Parliament for debate and approval to enhance the efficient and effective work of MDAs.