By Millicent Mannah
The Citizens Rights Network (CRN) on the 27th April 2022 launched the People’s Report on the New Direction Government’s four years in Governance at the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) Hall on Campbell Street in Freetown.
Speaking during the event, the Executive Director of Citizens’ Rights Network (CRN), Ibrahim Bai Koroma, intimated the gathering that the primary focus of the Report is on the aspect of effective service delivery principles/standards, policy development, coordination, monitoring and evaluation.
Specifically, he said, the Report has three objectives and prominent among the objectives is to identify practices, policy development, and challenges facing public service delivery through knowledge sharing, experiences and cooperation in the area of public service; to identify best practices in public service delivery which can serve as a model for improving public service delivery in Sierra Leone and complement best practices in and around the world and the last but certainly not the least objective to identify challenges in improving the quality of public service delivery as well as recommendations on overcoming such for better public service delivery.
He asserted that the content of the Report goes as far as providing answers to objectives one and two, while the outcome of the assessment in combination review of best practices on public service delivery he noted would be complemented by the CRN’s visit to various communities in the future which would help to find answers to the last objective of the assessment.
According to Koroma, Sierra Leone is on a high economic development trajectory with most of the anticipated projects or programs having transitioned from planning to implementation. Consequently, Koroma emphasized that a huge proportion of the population in Sierra Leone are still affected by extreme poverty and discrimination while some are faced with abuses. The rising income inequality, he noted ,is also a social problem that affects almost all Sierra Leoneans.
The assessment, according to Koroma, examines the selected critical indicators such as the legal and institutional framework, service standards or principles, policy development process, performance on governance indicators, human development, business climate and electronic government development.
With respect to public service delivery based on the Report results, he stated that Sierra Leone has made progress in improving public service delivery input, processes and performance by among other things, increasing public participation in the public service delivery process, enhancing access to basic services through adopting and deploying e-governance, decentralization of basic functions from National to Regional and District levels, increasing the adoption of good governance practices and raising competence of the bureaucracy.
” Nonetheless, the adoption of measures to improve public service delivery among public sector service varies by the Sierra Leone Government, hence with more capacitated nationals according to the local content policy in general registering relatively better performance on most indicators used to gauge performance in this Report than those that are less capacitated. This is indeed the main challenge and the rationale for this assessment which is to foster knowledge exchange and sharing that in turn is expected to enhance learning best practices in the realm of public service delivery among Civil Services,” he averred.
Touching on the recommendations, the Executive Director recommended policies and reforms for improving governance, particularly in the area of participation and greater involvement of persons with disabilities, marginalized women, youth, local Government and other social sectors in the country.
In addition, is the partnership and the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which according to him is another way through which the Government of Sierra Leone can take into consideration in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery systems across the country.
A Representative from the Sierra Leone Police (SLP), AIG Saio J Senesie, commended the Executive Director of Citizens Rights Network (CRN) and his team for putting together such a report stating that they would go through it thoroughly and see how best the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) could incorporate some of the issues highlighted in the Report into its system. He thanked the Press for giving a wider coverage to the program and craved for their indulgence to help disseminate the contents that are contained in the Report.
Other speakers during the event ,who also made meaningful contributions were Abdulrahman Rogers ,a Civil Society Activist, James Joseph Yovonie a representative from the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and Brima M. Lamin who was also charged with the responsibility of representing HRMO.
