Dear Editor – I refer to Solomon Star No: 63I0 Friday 24th June 20I6, topic as above regarding a leaked report to media though not official.
I believed this must be an attempt by the media in pursuing information regarding the issue after the call made by the Opposition leader requesting the DCCG to release to the public which MPs have been already benefited from the shipping grant.
In this regard, I would like to commend the Solomon Star for a job well done and as well as probably the Ministry of Infrastructure for providing the brief summary of shipping grant recipients to the media.
My call here is basically for the MID, responsible authority to provide to the public a much more detail summary report on the issue.
What was seen on the paper was purely a TAMPLATE SUMMARY which to me is just like “a stone flying from the dark end without a specific target”.
There is a mixer of recipients on the template including just few constituencies, existing shipping companies and some logistical enterprinious which put us to more confusions.
On the other hand, some MPs are receiving some funds for machineries; again, this is also confusing.
The core of the matter here is, could the responsible ministry give us a detail report in a form of more precise format including such thing as, Name of MPs, constituency, Ships bought, and allocations.
We readers don’t really understand the rationale behind entering existing shipping companies such as UTA shipping, Marau shipping etc…etc.. Is this are for freights and charges?
Or for MPs concerned who have now purchased those shipping companies for their constituencies.
Some companies’ names such as Gulatata’e shipping Enterprise is not relatively clear, is this a shipping company? Or a road transport company?
As a matter of fact we don’t see any ship named as such, except for Two ISUZU three tonnage vehicles. The question is, is it ok to divert shipping grants to road transport project?.
On the issue of machineries, make sure you MPs must do the right thing.
Use the fund for right purpose, no diversion please.
In summary, may I question the formula of distribution made by the government: Why other constituencies are much higher than others?
This was seen in the report, for some reasons known to the government probably alright but when we talk about buying of boats and machineries, the amount of fund allocations should be fairly distributed to MPs concerned, MPs should be fairly treated by giving them equal amount, our MP was only allocated $I million under machineries.
I presume it’s only for hiring of machineries to do road maintenance.
Lastly, when it comes to ownership of these properties, who is the owner of these properties at the end of the day?
Kenneth Baerodo
Central Kwara’ae Constituency
