One of the operators at the anti-corruption commission run call center in Sierra Leone’s capital city Freetown, Alice Kamara, said the center was created and working to reduce corruption in services delivered by the government.
The campaign is the government’s initiative, led by the Office of the Chief of Staff and the Anti-Corruption Commission, with support from the UK Department of International Development. As a testament to the “MCC Effect,” the Government launched the program to help improve its scorecard performance.
President Dr Ernest Bai Koroma had earlier said that the “Pay No Bribe Campaign” would primarily ensure that Service Charters for key institutions and agencies nationwide were printed and disseminated so that citizens would be aware of services provided with costs and expected service delivery time.
“Each Service Charter shall have the ACC hotline numbers to report incidences of corruption and administrative decadence or bottlenecks,” he noted, and vowed that as a nation, they would not relent in the fight to tackle corruption.
The MCC’s Sierra Leone Threshold Program, would specifically support government reforms that would lead to more effective delivery of water and electricity services, thereby limiting opportunities for corruption as the country works to recover from the Ebola epidemic.
The US$44.4 million grant, signed on 17 November, 2015 by the MCC and the Government of Sierra Leone, would support reforms “for more effective delivery of water and electricity services, with a focus on the greater Freetown area, and to support reforms to increase transparency and accountability in the delivery of these services, to limit opportunities for corruption”, according to the MCC.
The threshold program was launched on February 16, 2016 and would use data generated by the Pay No Bribe platform to strengthen regulatory institutions.
“We’ve seen some incredible things throughout this four-country trip and met some amazing, inspiring people across Benin, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and now here in Ghana. MCC is proud to support the growth of the power sector across the region and promote economic growth and poverty reduction that transforms the lives of millions of people for years to come”, said the MCC’s CEO.
