This medium has been reliably informed by sources within Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of an instruction to Heads of MDAs to give preference to South-easterners in particular, Mende applicants whenever they are making appointments in their institutions. The allegation continues that the plan is for a south-eastern tribal domination of the public sector.
Presently unemployment is rife across Sierra Leone. Qualified and educated people especially new college graduates are finding it nearly impossible to find jobs. Despite all the hype promoted during the start of the Free Quality Education programme, finding job placements for the thousands of graduates and the millions more in the general population remains a running problem this government has not been able to adequately address.
A Lecturer of Economics at an institution of higher learning proposed that over 85 per cent of the population is unemployed and they mostly survive by getting involved in some sort of trade. Therefore, when sources within Government MDAs say there is a growing complaint in government by people belonging to minority tribes of their offices being inundated and dominated by people from a single dominant tribe, then it brings to question and even to doubt, the aim of the ruling party government’s second term shift of focus that partly centres on Human Capital Development alongside the Feed Salone initiative.
Sources say the people from minority tribes in government feel squeezed out with one dominant tribe forming the majority of conversations and even work instructions, adding that the tribal balance in government is being tilted in one direction, in particular, the South-east, and this has become commonplace complaint since the emergence of the New Direction PAOPA system of administration by the SLPP-led Government. The plan we are told is for the total domination of the civil service by South-easterners mainly dominated by the Mende tribe.
“Once you are Mende whether the Human Resources head of an MDA knows you or not, he or she is under instruction to ensure that you get the job,” one of our sources stated, adding that the government’s employment and human capital development plan is for their members and supporters.
Our government sources say the complaining civil servants say they see people employed outside of job placement advertisements that are mostly unqualified, and would be trained on the job going forward, while educated and better qualified citizens are discountenanced with impunity.
According to our well-placed sources there is an alleged memo instructing all heads of government MDAs in hiring positions to only hire their tribes-people which will result to the public sector jobs being set aside for either people belonging to the ruling party or from its dominant tribe, Mende.
This brings to question the genuineness of this Government’s Human Capital Development programme which is now popularly dubbed according to our MDA sources, “The South-eastern Human Capital Development Plan.” If Human Capital Development is to be taken seriously and implemented in the interest of the nation, then it should involve mining the untapped potentials that lay latent in Sierra Leone regardless of tribe, region or political leaning by association or affiliation.
Meanwhile our sources say the idea does not only involve government MDAs, it is further aimed at escalation to include the award of Government advertisement to the media strictly to media houses that are recognised as belonging to or are identifying with the ruling party’s agenda.
By giving instructions for such an employment practice in government workplaces, our sources say the plan also involves the total capture and dominance of all government institutions that will see the executive and ruling party government getting their way with almost everything that is of interest or concern revolving in the public domain.
Aggrieved citizens working in government belonging to minority tribes have allegedly complained of many people in positions to hire giving jobs to their kinsmen, friends and lovers and spouses without the requisite education or training for the positions they are hired for.
As the largest employer in any society, government jobs are crucial to ensuring the nation does not suffer from the brain drain of qualified people urging to leave the country in search of job opportunities abroad. Such a plan would severely affect the nation’s incoherent human resources problem with the Human Capital Development scheme being implemented as a deliberate strategy to place political sympathisers and party cronies in key positions within the civil service cadre such as to be able to rock the boat of an opposition government be it by divulging key government administration secrets or by administrative sabotage.
This deliberate ploy, according to our sources, was tested in years prior to the 2017 general elections when the opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) party was in power and most of those administrative saboteurs, our sources maintain, were handsomely rewarded with political appointments or promotions when the SLPP subsequently took over governance in 2018. What is unfolding therefore in the civil service is the concretization of that agenda well ahead of when the SLPP will go into opposition.
Nightwatch will continue monitoring this ugly trend and any information from this diabolical plan would be reported. Stay tuned…