The National Accountability Group Sierra Leone (NAG-SL) has ended a day’s sensitization training workshop on Procurement procedures with civil society groups, councilors and other stakeholders in Kenema District.
In his address the Program Officer of National Accountability Group Abu Bakar Kamara disclosed that 70% of the budget allocation received by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies are local revenue generated by the Local Councils across the country and are used for procurement purposes.
He said it has been observed that over the past years the procurement process has been compounded with a lot of inadequacies, which has undermined effective service delivery and sustainable community and National development.
Some time last year, he said, NAG did a pilot project to monitor revenue collection at the Freetown City Council and Tonkolili District Council and the finding revealed some inadequacies surrounding procurement in terms of transparency and accountability in procuring goods and services.
The finding also revealed that most of the people dealing with procurement issues do not properly understand the mechanism surrounding the process.
Abu Bakar Kamara said the project is divided into three phases, and phase one involved Developing, printing, launching and dissemination of the hand book. Phase two involves training of civil society on procurement, monitoring, training of councilors and Councils officers on procurement procedures and Phase three involves monitoring of procurement process in the Tonkolili District Council, Kenema District Council and the Freetown City Council. He called on all to continue to monitor the process.
By Saffa Moriba