The Deputy Commissioner of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) Augustine Foday Ngobie from Thursday 16th to Sunday 19th March, 2023 embarked on vigorous supervision of the verification exercises of the Productive Social Safety Nets and Youths Empowerment (PSSNYE) project, which were carried out by staffs of the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).
The phase II of the Productive Social Safety Net and Youth Empowerment Project (PSSNYE) is to provide beneficiary households, including female headed households, elderly headed households and disabled persons the opportunity to verify their pre-listed names and information. This effort is to help mitigate the negative impacts of chronic poverty hence the project is also called ‘Ep fet po’ project. The PSSNYE is a five-year $ forty (40) Million Social Protection Intervention Project funded by the Government of Sierra Leone, UNICEF and the World Bank.
Speaking to members of the public and persons who had come for verification at the Community Centre in Yoni Village, Panga Chiefdom, Pujehun District-where he made a stopover, the ACC"s Deputy Boss, underscored that, there should be integrity, transparency and trust in the verification exercise. He emphasized that ACC's involvement in the process is deliberate, as the project should be free of all forms of corruption and corrupt practices.
In a related development, the ACC Deputy Commissioner made similar visit to the verification exercise that was in progress at the Court Barry in Pujehun Town, Panga Chiefdom, Pujehun District on Friday 17th March 2023, where he spoke to the over 150 registrants. He advised them to be patient to go through the process and further assured all of fairness and integrity of the exercise.
Earlier, at the different verification centres, the ACC Pujehun District Monitor, Tamba entreated all persons to listen carefully to the ACC Deputy Commissioner, emphasizing that, the exercise was to make clarifications and confirm details and information earlier provided during the pre-listing exercises. He allayed their fears that the process will be transparent and impartial, with the right people captured in the database.
Concerns from persons who had come for verification included, the mismatch in their names provided during the pre-listing and that which the officers announced during the verification exercises. The Deputy Commissioner ACC, Mr. Ngobie responded to these issues and stressed that their concerns and issues will be judiciously addressed by NaCSA and the ACC.
It could be recalled that the Deputy Commissioner ACC has always been monitoring and supervising the implementation of the SSN and now the PSSNYE project which is the World Bank, UNICEF and the Government of Sierra Leone supported programme, implemented by NaCSA, with the Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) component spearheaded by the ACC.The GRM is whereby the ACC engages project beneficiaries and stakeholders on the project deliverables and popularizes the GRM in collaboration with the other implementing partners, receive grievances/complaints/dissatisfactions from project beneficiaries, stakeholders and other community members, and help to resolve those grievances with feedback provided to complainants.
These supervision activities by the ACC Deputy Commissioner took place in the Western Area Rural District, the South and Eastern Regions of Sierra Leone.
In the company of the Deputy Commissioner ACC, in the conduct of these exercises was the Director, Public Education and External Outreach, ACC Patrick Sandi.
