GRAND CORRUPTION
…CITIZENS DEMAND CLERK’S SACKING, JAILING
By Ibrahim Alusine Kamara (Kamalo)
The Clerk of Sierra Leone Parliament, Hon. Paran Tarawally, may be swimming in abashment and self-pity for not just causing the inevitable vilification of that envious office but indirectly bringing dishonour to the country’s august legislative body.
In the days closing 2023, or the early days of January 2024, the Sierra Leonean public was rudely awakened by the news that Hon. Tarawally, being the Clerk of Parliament, had sacked more than one hundred (100) workers from the Parliamentary workforce, with the Speaker of the House denying knowing anything about it though a Member of Parliament, Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, had thrown a challenge that he the Speaker knew about every bit of the bizarre development.
Whilst the wrangling was going on, the social media was sadly awash with two sets of news that two of those sacked had succumbed to death, thus making matters worse for Hon. Paran Tarawally, as insiders suddenly knocked him out as having clandestinely employed not only his close family members, including his wife, said to be receiving mouthwatering salary without going to work for once, but other close relations.
Leaks from Parliamentary insiders exposed that Abibatu Paran Tarawally, having been recruited by her husband, was receiving a gross salary to the tune of thirty-one million seven hundred thirty-five thousand eight hundred thirty-nine Old Leones (Le31,735,839) with medical, rent, and utility allowances.
In a Public Notice issued by his office later on, however, Hon. Paran Tarawally attempted to clarify the issue and quickly called for the establishment of a special committee to investigate the matter and report to the Parliamentary Commission in the end.
Meanwhile, news in the public domain indicates that upon being investigated, the Clerk of Parliament and his wife, Abibatu Paran Tarawally were put on bail by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and that the wife has agreed to pay back the money she received as salary since recruited as a Human Resources Officer at Parliament.
Further, the Commission is said to have confirmed having recovered about 90 percent of the money from Mrs. Tarawally as the investigations continue.
The question now on the lips of Sierra Leoneans is why the Clerk of Parliament has not been asked to step aside whilst the investigations are ongoing as it has been the case so far with other public officials who previously bumped into ACC investigations.
Many university graduates are volunteering as teachers and are in classrooms across the country making future presidents, ministers, public and private administrators, entrepreneurs, lawyers, engineers, doctors, bankers, and the rest of societal expert makers, as nurses are also out there saving the lives of women and children and the rest of humanity voluntarily. They have been in such voluntarism for years without any pincode to receive a salary and Abi Paran Tarawally was receiving such a colossal amount sweetly every month for doing nothing.
Issues like these are the real ones affecting the country. Therefore, it comes as a surprise that the ACC never asked Hon. Paran Tarawally to step aside while investigating him for an act considered “high-level corruption” in the highest arm of the government.
Pundits believe that if the ACC Commissioner’s numerous local and international awards were truly in tandem with his genuine stance in the fight against graft, and the Bio government was serious about fighting corruption, Hon. Tarawally should have been shown the exit door upon his wife’s guilt and willingness to refund what she had received as salary so far from the Parliament coffers.
Sierra Leoneans say the sorriest part of the whole story about fighting corruption is when the ACC was to drag poor teachers to the Cotton Tree in the Central Business District of Freetown to name and shame them for helping pupils during public exams but would exhibit a lack of the patriotic gusto by treating such a matter of high-level corruption with levity.
A man claiming to be a member of the opposition and identified himself only as Momodu but declined to show the party he belongs said that “rampant corruption without any iota of tangible development is the hallmark of the paopa administration but instead of addressing such a worrying trend, Bio and his bunch of dullards parading the nooks and crannies of the country as government officials would be busy calculating the common human imperfections in members of the opposition party to hound them harshly.