Information reaching this medium suggests that about Twelve Million New Leones (Nle 12,000,000) the equivalent of 12 billion old Leones is missing at the Sierra Leone Road Saftey Authority, if this is true, then the whole system needs to be overhauled.
A public notice released by the Scorpion Squad of the Anti Graft Agency on September, 12, 2024, indicated that the Squad raided the Headquarters of the SLRSA due to information received about the huge loss of funds generated between March and August, 2024. The Public notice also indicated that the arrest of 34 System Operators have been made and are helping the ACC with its investigations.
However, the public notice did not indicate the quantum of money in question, but our source disclosed that the fund that was missing amounted to about 12 billion old Leones. If this is true, then the whole system at SLRSA needs to be reviewed. What may have prompted the ACC to launch an investigation is because the quantum is alarming, but it is also possible that the perpitrators may have been taking advantage of the porosity of the system to swindle the institution far longer than we can imagine.
Whatever measure that are in place must be looked into carefully, with a view to sealing those leakages that have been used to siphon funds generated by the institution. Customers used to pay for products or services through the Banks, yet the systems are still peniterated. This could mean that the System Operators still have ways of manipulating the system to their personal advantage.
This medium would like to suggest that a sophistacated system be created to generate codes after payment has been made to the bank. The Bank Account of the SLRSA should be linked to the Operating Systems of the Authority, so that after payment has been made, the system would authmatically generate a code that the customer would use to apply for the product. The Operating system should be made in such a way that it could only accept the code provided by the bank as generated by the Operating System of the Authority through its linked account. This may prevent the possibility, where customers would by-pass the bank and pay directly to the Staff of the Authority. This loss is too huge for a struggling economy like ours, so we need to act fast to prevent a recurrence of this situation.
@DevelopmentJournalism