Mr. President, there is every need for your administration to pay keen attention to the current efforts by your administration to retrieve the many Government vehicles allegedly carted away by APC Government functionaries. The current scenario, which had also been the case in 2007, did not witness such a chaotic situation that has led to embarrassment for most civil servants, members of the judiciary and other Government officials, to name but a few.
What is different this time round is that the committee set up, under the leadership of Hon. Foday Rado Yokie, has not been up to the task for a number of reasons and this has already created huge embarrassment for the Government, both locally and internationally.
To start with, the Committee failed to properly bring out what their mandate was especially as it relates to what category of vehicles they were tasked to retrieve before they could settle down for work. This failure to indentify this category of vehicles led to a very chaotic scene where marauding and exuberant party youths went on to target and molest well meaning civil servants and members of the judiciary found with government vehicles anywhere at anytime.
These actions have directly undermined his Excellency’s drive to curb lawlessness and indiscipline. The activities of these marauding militias, in the name of the retrieving government vehicles committee, have justified lawlessness and unconstitutional order.
The committee should improve on its communication drive to visibly point out to the public the category of vehicles the committee is targeting and totally weed out the hooligans and thugs from the streets. There have been attempts by the committee at apologizing and further distancing themselves from the so-called gangs and hooligans who claim to be working on behalf of the committee.
Another failure is the attempt at putting the total number of Government vehicles at 8,000. Come on. This is a complete misnomer. Let Rado Yokie and his guys come out and clarify this error as soon as possible. This is completely untrue and very misleading to the people of this country and has got the tendency to further hype the tensions around the process. Whenever an individual or individuals are entrusted with national positions or assignments they should be cautious with the type of information they put out for public consumption.
We have also noticed that the Committee for retrieving vehicles has not recognized the role of the Police, which should have served as a support to the committee as established by law.
In most cases, the committee only refers to the Police when they have stiff resistance with regards enforcing their mandate in certain garages or private residences. This is very illegal and would hugely undermine the President’s aspirations in maintaining discipline and constitutional order. Let the committee use the Police and if possible the Military where necessary.
Lastly we have also noticed that the process has only been concentrated in the capital city of Freetown and very little efforts in the provincial towns and cities. Government officials in these areas have the tendency to easily whisk away government vehicles due to the porous nature of our borders. This, in fact, explains for the little or no progress the committee has registered since it started its work.
It is but proper that successive Governments should put in place a correct inventory system and proper handing over structure that would save us from this craziness we have consistently witnessed whenever power changes hands. Whiles the focus has always been at saving governments’ property, it has also been widely used to witch-hunt and unnecessarily target past government officials.