Commonwealth Training Unites Media and Civil Society in Sierra Leone

Budget and Financial Reporting is focus of the three-day workshop

A training programme conducted by the Commonwealth Secretariat on “Budget and Financial Reporting” in Freetown, Sierra Leone has solidified the resolve of non state actors to shoot for effectual monitoring of the national budget at especially the local government level now that governance has been decentralized since 2004. The three day workshop brought agreement between the media, mainstream civil society and the government appointed, semi-autonomous budget oversight committees in the local government councils; and, also brought unity and understanding among these stakeholders; resulting in the initiation of the process for the formation of an organization that will monitor budget processes throughout the country.

The workshop which targeted 35 participants from media, civil society, private sector and budget oversight bodies used the simple method of plenary, presentations, Q&A, Focus Group Discussions and Participatory Research Analysis. However, notwithstanding the fact that this is the second in the series of training on “Budget and Financial Reporting”, with the first one held two years ago; this one was different because participants agreed on concrete follow up activities: setting up an organization that will mainly monitor budget processes, set up an E-serve to share information, encourage the development of fiduciary and development reporters.

Sierra Leone, a small sub-Saharan country is barely stabilizing from a decade long civil war; principally as a result of corruption. This corruption was based on the fact that citizens had no knowledge of the budget processes and eventhough there is an Anti-Corruption outfit, if especially the media does not know how to report fiduciary crime, citizens do not understand, in simple terms the use of their tax money; we could be beating a dead horse which makes the importance of such trainings an imperative.

The lead trainer, Orin Gordon, opened the working session with an interactive session on the overview of the objectives, expectations of the participants and outcomes of the workshop. This was immediately followed by the presentation of Dr. Bob Conteh, a lecturer at Njala University who laid down the principles of budget monitoring and linked that up with the Public Finance Management (PFM) systems and ended by espousing best practices. Sarah Sankoh, Chair, Western Rural District Council Budget Oversight Committee, directly linked gender profiling in the budget to development.

Day Two was started by David Kalete, Civil Society Liaison Manager at the Commonwealth Secretariat, whose presentation exposed the role of civil society in fostering advocacy, lobbying and effective citizens’ engagement with duty bearers while the media had the sacred responsibility of fairly reporting the use of people’s money by those charged with the duty. Emmanuel Saffa-Abdulai, CEO, Society for Democratic Initiatives (SDI) gave the status of, and extent to which civil society is involved in budget monitoring. Umaru Fofana, President, Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), began with the efforts of journalists to improve on their image by reporting balanced news but regretted the interference of politicians in especially the running of supposed Independent rural radio stations which he said would make it difficult to fairly report the financial behaviour of local councils by intimidated staff. Sulaiman Koroma, Director of Finance, Sierra Leone Red Cross Society, directly linked the use of money by those charged with the responsibility with auditing as a watch dog but regretted that audit reports are always used after the resources have been used. He said there is need for effective engagement by civil society and media on the avid need to create an enabling environment for participation, information sharing and accountability on budget monitoring. Dr. Alfred Kandeh, CEO, National Public Procurement Authority (NPPA), said his outfit was crucial in the financial functioning of Sierra Leone in that 70% of the use of all fiduciary resources is procurement related. Dr. Conteh intimated that it need not be overemphasized because 60% of the budget is externally supported. The last presentation of the day was done by Tasima Jah, from the ministry of Finance. Tasima, basically laid bare the budget preparation and utilization of the budget.

Day Three started with Focus Group Discussions where the participants were divided into four groups:- (1) How to achieve sustainable budget monitoring and reporting, (2) Engagement Strategy, (3) Role of Media, (4) Role of Civil Society. These groups reported later. The main emerging issue was the birth of an animal that would effectually monitor the budget processes from formulation to execution. The workshop ended on a peaceful note with outlining the way forward, engagement strategy and evaluation.

*Mr. Falla Ensa-N’Dayma, is the President of the Trade Union Confederation of Sierra Leone (TUC-SL) anew National labour centre that is a member of the lager civil society and works withy government institutions including the National Task Force on Decentralization of which the Vice-President is the Chairman.

Posted by Falla Ensa-N’Dayma at Oct 14 2010 2:13PM