In a bid to put a permanent end to the perennial Menace of power outage in the House of Parliament coupled with assumed fuel mismanagement, the House Speaker the Rt. Hon. Segepoh Solomon Thomas with his workaholic Deputy Speaker Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, has on 18 November 2024, made an inspection tour to the newly constructed NP Fuel station with the capacity of 5,000 liters which is automated to fuel the Parliament generator.
The Rt. Hon. Speaker Segepoh Solomon Thomas vehemently affirmed that the issue of fuel shortage for the House of Parliament had been engragriously hindering the Parliamentary Service adding that, the demands for fuel on the budget of Parliament had been dwindling the budget meant for the Parliamentary Services.
He recalled that the staff manning the generator room had been demanding for 500 liters, 1,000 liters as the case may be which imposed an age old problem on the fuel consumption for Parliament. Speaker Thomas continued that to end such problem of fuel consumption for Parliament, precipitated their quest to direct NP-SL to install Fuel tank directly connect to the generator.
“So just like the NP has pumped for us 5,000 liters, we are now better placed to monitor the fuel consumption for Parliament. It has happened on two occasions when there is no EDSA light and unfortunately Parliament had no fuel in the generator even though the generator staff claimed that they had pumped fuel in the generator. That was the more reason we asked NP-SL to install Fuel Tank with the capacity of Le 5,000 directly connected to the generator in order to avert the initial problem,” said Speaker Thomas.
Speaker Thomas expressed optimism that the outcome of this new initiative would enable Parliament to quantify its fuel consumption and examine whether there (is/was) any corrupt practices in the fuel administration in order to put a concrete end to such corrupt practices if there was any.
Speaker Thomas gave a glad tiding assurance that the issue of fuel shortage in the generator room had been dead, permanently buried and would never resurrect under is leadership as the Speaker of the Sixth Parliament.
Parliamentary and Public Relations Department, Parliament of Sierra Leone.
