A government survey in Sierra Leone has revealed that the West African country’s public sector is still riddled with corruption, despite warnings from international donors that they would slash much-needed aid if the scourge was not tackled.

The report released last week by the office of Vice President Solomon Berewa said “corrupt practices in Sierra Leone are widespread… and service delivery by the public sector is generally marked by irregularities and bribery.”

According to the survey, two-thirds of users of public services, from telephones to banks to schools or hospitals, reported having to pay bribes to use the service.

Forty-two percent of public officials have admitted to mismanaging their institutions, including misappropriating budgets, usually by drawing on international aid earmarked for rebuilding the west African country after its decade-long civil war, which ended in January 2002.

Some suggest that corrupt practices by a string of military governments fuelled the 1991 uprising by the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) against President Joseph Momoh. That rebellion plunged the country into a civil war marked by widespread amputations, rape, murder and the forcible conscription of children as fighters.

Five months after the war ended, a civilian government was installed after elections generally described as fair. Hopes were high that the new administration of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah would finally bring an end to the bribery and graft that characterised previous governments.

But despite repeated warnings from donors and oversight by a UN peacekeeping mission, there has been little progress in ridding the country of the corruption scourge.

“The government has an uphill task to fight corruption in the country, which is now regarded as the second war to be fought after the end of the 10-year rebel war,” a western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

“If it does not distance itself from corrupt officials or put them on trial, it faces the risk of losing the lucrative economic and financial support of the international community.”

In November last year, a delegation of British lawmakers visited Sierra Leone to drive home the urgency of ridding the country of corruption.

“The government of Sierra Leone must do everything within its power to stop corruption,” said British MP Win Griffiths, who led the parliamentary delegation.

“There is in existence a 10-year agreement between Britain and Sierra Leone under which London gives development assistance to Sierra Leone,” said Griffiths.

“We are watching how the Sierra Leone government is putting such assistance into practice… We give you some help, but you have got to show us how it is being spent.”

But Sierra Leone has continued to fall short on promises to curb corruption, and that has begun to have an impact on the money flowing into the country of 5,4 million people, many of whom live on less than a dollar a day.

The European Union has withheld two million euros that were to be used to fund local elections set for May 22, citing among its reasons the fact that the electoral commission has not accounted for how it disbursed funds for the 2002 presidential and general elections.

The EU is also sending an audit team this month to the capital Freetown to see just how the millions it has contributed to help rebuild the country have been spent.

The World Bank last month announced a $25 000 (about R170 000) grant for the local elections, roughly half of which, it stipulated, was to go to ensuring good governance in the run-up to the vote.

Rod MacJohnson,/South African Press Association – Agence France-Presse, Independent Online, May 6, 2004