Njundu Drammeh: Eyes Right On The D500M Against COVID-19 

If the “soul” of this nation is operated on, I bet the autopsy report will read “cause of death: corruption”.

And so all eyes, especially that of the National Assembly, should be on the 500 Million Dalasis earmarked to combat COVID-19.

Every butut fully accounted for; every payment meticulously scrutinised that they followed due process, laid down procurement and payments procedures and each item or payment was value for money. And Parliament must ensure the Ministry is audited and the report made public.

The Nation Assembly, or whatever national oversight body is there, must insist that the Ministry of Health submits to it a detailed implementation plan with costed activities, timelines and clear monitoring and reporting mechanisms.

Unless these are in place, and scrutinized, many involved in the fight Covid-19 will see the funds allocated as “manna from heavens”, a free for all, a kind “grab as much as you can” game.

In crisis like this, Government officials, unfortunately, devise means and methods to defraud the people, flouting all rules of business In the name of “emergency” or “lack of time”.

Those who suffer the consequence of this “farce” are the victims and survivors, and the peopl who would be hard hit by the pandemic. But do such officials worry about the masses, who Marx calls the “proletariat”? Do care about what fate will befall them? And what would? In a country where corrupt people are celebrated as “good sons and daughters” and honest ones derided and lampooned ? In a culture which tells one “a cow eats where it is tethered? In a society where people go unpunished even if all know the property owned is ill gotten?

We must do better as country; we can do better. But first, we must be ready to fight the canker called “corruption”, on all fronts, by all who have a little conscience left in them.

There is no enemy more portent against development, progress, the poor and human rights than corruption. And our the winning of the fight against Covid-19 will be determined by progress in the fight against corruption. And no virus is fatal to the poor than corruption.

Certainly there still are men and women who don’t have their price; who are actuated by nothing but the desire to serve country and people; who would rather die than live on the sweat on another person’s brow. But such people, as Shakespeare speare said in Hamlet:

“…To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand”.

A lute continua for an d with the poor.