By Janet A. Sesay
Orange Sierra Leone (OSL) has on Monday 20th November 2023, held a day’s workshop on ‘Ethics and compliance Day’ celebration with partners and vendors on zero-tolerance to corruption. The event took place at Orange head office in Freetown under the theme ‘Corruption Risk Map- Scenarios and Mitigation Plan.’
Guest speaker of the event, Cheikh Diongue Mbaye, Governance Internal Control and Audit Director, OSL said the day was one of their event that formed part of their ethics and compliance week in which they were going to meet with their stake holders, staff and vendors to assess the rate of compliance with corruption laws.
Mr Mbaye said soliciting or accepting an advantage during transaction had been one of the challenges facing the company, but could be nipped in the bud by ensuring compliance
“We are trying to raise awareness with partners and vendors to avoid the unethical behaviour; it does not build trust between Orange and partners,” he appealed.
In her presentation, Head of Ethics and Compliance, Elizabeth Fatoma touched on contract performance, management, ethical business and the avoidance of corruption. She said they had held training factors in which they have got lots of training on compliance and the feedback is encouraging.
“Based on the feedback, they have put a lot of things in place for the past two years in the company,” she said adding the move is to avoid corruption in the company.
The company, the Ethics and Compliance chief says, has a purchasing policy, sub delegation, technical and anti-corruption clauses in place and that partners should not engage in anything partaining to corruption and failure leads to penalty
Madam Fatoma further stated that they also had the customer-supplier agreement mostly for the vendors or partners.
“In the case of the procurement team, if the partners and vendors want to maintain the two sides, they need to have a favourable agreement before it gets to the legal team who are drafting the contract based on what the procurement and the B2B team tell them on the scope of work and how they were going to draw the contract,” she stressed adding that agreement breaches attract penalties.
She called on partners to refer those seeking information about the company to OSL management on toll free line, 505 saying “the company will take it from there.”
Question-and-answer session makes the session interactive.