By Aji Fatou Faal & Kaddy Jawo
The parliamentary Finance and Public Accounts Committee has instructed the Accountant General (AG) to recover all outstanding unretired imprests given to about 80 government functionaries between 2007 to 2015, totaling D31 million.
The order was contained in the committee’s latest interim report released on 27 June. It highlighted that from 2007 to end of 2015, imprests given to individuals that have not been retired amounted to D31 million.
The committee headed by National Assembly Speaker, Mariam Jack-Denton and Wulli representative Sidia Jatta, admonished the AG “for the failure to ensure all imprests are retired on their due dates… because the 2016 Financial Regulations … are very clear in that all imprests must be retired on the last day of the financial year.”
Most of the queried imprests were given to people who were working at the Office of the President at the time and military and security personnel among others.
They include Dr Njogu L Bah – D5.6 million, General Lang Tombong Tamba – D6.6 million, Lamin A Camara of OP – D2.8 million, Sulayman Samba – D1.1 million and Ebrima O Camara – D1 million.
Among others mentioned in the list were Ebrima Bun Sanneh and Sako Drammeh of Immigration, Major Serign Modou Njie, Omar Gibba, Swareh Jabai, Ida Faye-Hydara, Ebrima JT Kujabi, Commander Madani Senghore, Yancuba Colley, Abdoulie FNS Sanneh of the Ministry of Health, Mustapha Faal, Ousman Jobe and Sana Jarju of OP.
The committee has recommended that henceforth, a ceiling of not more than D50,000 be put on imprests and that imprest retirement time be shortened to not more than seven days.
It has also recommended for sanctions to be applied to individuals or heads of departments who “have demonstrated gross financial misconduct that led to or has the potential to lead to loss of revenue of government”.
