By Sheka Tarawalie, Freetown.
A group of international oil management experts and supporters of Sierra Leone, including personnel from the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Revenue Watch Institute and the International Seminar Bumper Project were today received at State House by President Koroma as a joint scoping mission with a view to enhancing and maximising the country’s oil potential.
Addressing the team, President Koroma thanked them for their quick response to an invitation for intervention in the sector. He gave them a background of how an oil find has been made in the country but that the internal authority supposed to be handling the sector is a mere unit in his office. He therefore said that the unit clearly has “limited capacity” to handle the “technical and complex” matters relating to oil business.
“We need the relevant expertise to maximize our oil returns. Because of that, we set up a presidential task force as a committee charged with the responsibility to effect the transformation from a unit to an oil company to ensure that we have the capacity to handle the business effectively,” he stated. The President noted the necessity to prepare the legal instruments to that effect and the need to train all stakeholders with the primary objective of “making whatever find we have to be beneficial to the country… and evenly distributed”. The Head of State cautioned that other sectors or activities should not be abandoned because of oil: “It is a great challenge, but I believe your group will give us the advice to meet this challenge and move forward.”
At State House again today, President Koroma received the new executive of the West African College of Physicians (Sierra Leone Chapter), headed by Dr. Patrick E. Coker.
Receiving them at State House, the President said he was pleased that they were coming after he delivered a speech at the state opening of Parliament last Friday where he raised matters relating to the health situation in the country, while hoping that this meeting would be the first of interactive consultations in addressing the myriad problems facing the sector. He maintained that the health sector posed an embarrassment to the country: “We are not the poorest nation on earth; we have the potential to be among the top-ranking nations in terms of our natural and human resources. But I think we have not got it right in the past, especially in the management of our human resources.” He maintained that the group would certainly be needed to play an advisory role to government in terms of motivating medical personnel to stay in the country and working out strategies that will give the right answers backed by the political and financial will.
It is the President’s view that the answer could lie in creating a separate regulatory body (different from the Public Service Commission) that would determine the conditions of service of personnel in the health sector and also regulate the overall health service. “There is a possibility for us to succeed, and we have to succeed… By the end of the year, we should come out with a definite road-map on the activities we have to take to ensure that we put behind us this talk about Sierra Leone having the worst infant and maternal mortality rates and least medical practitioners in- country,” President Koroma said.
The President congratulated Dr. Coker for being elected President of the organisation: “I hope and pray that you will conduct your affairs in a manner that will make all of us proud.”
Earlier, Dr. Coker gave an overview of the organization, founded in 1976, as a virtual college and not a structure or college per se. However, he noted that it has been very instrumental in not only training health personnel and advising governments, but in improving on the overall health situation in the countries that seek their advise. He urged government to upgrade its health institutions as in Ghana and Nigeria, while expressing commitment to promoting the health of the people of West Africa.
Dr. Coker was introduced by the Vice President (Sierra Leone Chapter) Dr Alpha Bundu Kamara, while female doctor Euphemia Gooding gave the vote of thanks. Others included Dr Daniel Olubimi Robin-Coker, Dr Egerton Luke, Dr E.C, Cummings, Dr. Arnold Aubee, Dr. Kojo Carew and Dr Sahr Gevao.
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