The Director of National Budget in the Ministry of Finance Mr. Tasima Jah has assured the Ministry of Internal Affairs that his Ministry is committed to the construction of a new correction center that will replace the Pa Demba Road Maximum Correctional Centre.
He made this disclosure during the ongoing budget process at the Ministry of Finance in Freetown after the Internal Affairs Ministry had presented its Fiscal Year 2021 budget.
“This is a very laudable project and it is high time we started seeing some resources allocated to it for it to be achieved in the next couple of years,” he said.
He said since the idea of relocating the Pa Demba Road Correctional Centre was brought up by late President Ahmed Tejan Kabba some 20 years ago very little has been done to ensure that that is achieved.
During the budget representation, the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Mr. Lahai Laurence Leema said the prison break that took place during the reign of late President Ahmed Tejan Kabba necessitated the relocation of the prison to Songo outside the capital of Freetown.
He said that is already on the pipeline since he took over as a Deputy Minister and a committee has been set up and chaired by the Vice President Dr. Juldeh Jalloh.
“Once the work of the committee is done, then we can move forward,” he said.
The key deliverables for 2021 FY are the alignment of the Ministry’s Strategic Plan with the National Development Plan (2019-2023), operationalize the two Directorate structure of the Ministry as recommended by the Management and Functional Review (MFR) Report of 2007, conduct effective monitoring of Agencies and assessment of funding gap for donor support, roll out implementation of the National Action Plan on Statelessness, and develop a unified intranet platform for the Security sector.
The total estimate for the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the 2021 FY is budget estimate – recurrent expenditure Le 14,379,700,000.00, budget ceiling – recurrent expenditure Le 1,281,700,000.00, and excess over ceiling Le 13,098,000,000.00.
