By Aruna Turay

Lies spread widely on mainstream and social media regarding the monthly salary received by the Financial Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Sahr Jusu, have been out rightly debunked by senior All People’s Congress (APC) member, Dr. Sylvia Olayinka Blyden.

It can be recalled that over the week, there have been social media circulations informing that Mr. Jusu receives Seventeen Thousand United States dollars as monthly salary, equivalent to One Hundred and Seventy-Nine Million, Seven Hundred and Seventy-Five Thousand Leones.

Setting the records straight, Dr. Blyden wrote: “Sahr Jusu is no friend of mine but from what I’m seeing here, Sahr Jusu is still earning the Exact Same Salary which he inherited from our APC-led Government payment to former Financial Secretary Edmond Koroma”.

Blyden went on to say: “If you study the table as released, you see a column with the word OTHALL which basically means Other Allowance (Annual Leave Allowance). This money is paid to all Civil Servants no matter your rank. You get equivalent of one month Salary once a year as Leave Allowance. I do the same thing for all my staff as well. They all get one month Salary in lieu of going on Leave. So on some months, their payslips show double their monthly salary. For this spreadsheet for a certain single month in the year 2020, Sahr Jusu and Idrissa Kanu have collected their Annual Leave Allowance whilst Matthew Dingie, Tasima Jah, Amir Alghali, Adams Kargbo, etc. etc. have not collected their Leave Allowance that month. They may have collected it in a month before or are due to collect it in a subsequent month. Bottomline, the same sum of Le86,935,130 that Edmond Koroma used to collect, is the same money that Sahr Jusu is still collecting”.

The fine female journalist now politician used the forum as an opportunity to appeal to colleague journalists to practise good journalism devoid of malicious politics.