By Sulaiman Jalloh
Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, the deputy speaker of parliament and chairman of the parliamentary Public Account Committee (PAC) on Tuesday, June 11th, 2024, ordered the deduction of about Five Thousand Leones (NLe 5,000) from Joseph Fatoma’s account, the assistant director of fiscal risk at the Ministry of Finance, assuring that, in this year’s audit report hearing in parliament, they will recover public money mismanaged or unaccounted for and failure to produce correspondence when solicited for by Auditor Service Sierra Leone.
The Deputy Speaker of Parliament was speaking at the ongoing PAC hearing on the 2022 Audit Report.
“Five Thousand New Leones will be deducted from your account and paid to the Auditors’ account,” Hon. Tawa Conteh ordered. The said amount will be deducted from Mr. Jospeh’s account for failing to produce correspondence to auditors of Auditor Service Sierra Leone at the time of audit during the year 2022.
Before the decision of the Deputy Speaker, Morie Lansana, the Deputy Auditor-General, had slammed Joseph Fatoma over a typo that led the audit to a conclusion in 2022 audit report against the Gento Group of Companies. “Copy and paste is not good and dangerous,” Hon. Tawa said.
In a short interview with parliamentary journalists after the hearing, Joseph Fatoma, assistant director of fiscal risk at the Ministry of Finance said it was not the Ministry of Finance that was audited, but the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA) and that he was just called to clarify something he said he did and for which documents were provided. When asked if he will be ready to pay the amount, Joseph said ‘they will write me and I have to respond,’ adding he had provided all required documents to Audit Service Sierra Leone.
Copyright –Published in print in Expo Times Newspaper on Friday, June 14th , 2024 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)
