Line ministries including Paramount Chiefs from the 149 Chiefdoms, 84 Headmen and 16 Tribal Heads from the Western Area, will on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th May 2012, be hosted in a two-day symposium to be organized the Open Government Initiative (OGI) in Freetown. On the second day of the symposium, President Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma is expected to attend and listen to line ministries giving explanations as to how they utilized government’s budgets allocated to them.
The President is also expected to give the keynote address in the symposium and also respond to questions from members of the public in attendance.
The Director of Budget in the Ministry of Development and Economic Planning has also consented to be in full attendance to do a precise presentation of budgets allocated to the ministries of the agenda for change, in the presences of President Koroma. According to the Director of OGI, Mrs.
His Excellency President Ernest Koroma
Khadija Sesay, the two-day symposium is a demonstration of accountability and good governance.
According to her, one of the principles of democracy is to evaluate the performance of government to ensure performance standards. She said this is first in the history of Sierra Leone, to bring together all the Paramount Chiefs, Headmen and Tribal Heads from the Western Area to account for their stewardship.
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| Director of OGI, Mrs. Khadija Sesay |
According to her, the forum will also attract the physically challenged, women’s organization and youth groups and other stakeholders across the country. The participants, she went on, are expected to discuss on developments that have been carried out by the line ministries, adding further that the forum will also provide an opportunity for senior government officials to account for their stewardship to the people of this country.
The Director furthered that, her institution implemented a pilot survey in April in collaboration with Statistics Sierra Leone titled ‘Citizens Report Card’. The survey, she said, provided the opportunity for citizens to scrutinize the line ministries of the agenda for change.
Mrs. Sesay maintained that, the questionnaires of the citizens’ report card will also be validated by civil society and heads of departments prior to the conduct of a national survey.
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Newspaper in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
