May 27, 2019
By: Frederick V. Kanneh
Statistician General, Prof. Osman A. Sankoh addressing the press
Chairman of the Sierra Leone Statistics Council, Moses L.J. Williams, has on Friday 24th May, 2019, confirmed to journalists that 244 workers have been sacked from the institution because they were recruited using wrong employment procedures.
Speaking on Friday to newsmen at their headquarters,A.J. Momoh Street in Freetown, Williams stated that the massive sacking was as a result of the fact that all those involved used ‘illegal’ employment procedures to enter into the institution.
He claimed that their presence has led to the underperformance of the institution, which according to him, has contributed greatly to it being regarded among others as irrelevant and a waste of tax payers’ money.
He said as an institution, they wanted to make sure that proper mechanism was put in place in order to achieve the goal of the New Direction.
“Those that have gone can still re-apply and be recruited provided if they meet the requirements. As much as we are not here to marginalize anyone, equally so, we want to make sure that proper procedures are followed for the benefit of the country,” he said.
In his maiden address to the press since his appointment in April 2018, the Statistician General, Prof. Osman A. Sankoh, expressed gratitude to President Julius Maada Bio for appointing Moses M. Williams as the chairman of the institution, adding that Williams is not only a seasoned demographer, but had also served the institution for a long time and was abreast with its challenges.
Highlighting the gains made by the institution within his first year of stewardship, Prof. Sankoh said apart from the fact that Statistics Sierra Leone has attracted mostly all Ministries, Departments and Agencies, it has also won grants of $18 million and it has been elected to serve on the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2020 to 2023.