The Chairman and members of the Board of Commissioners of the National Elections Commission led by Jerome George Korkoya are expected to appear before the House Plenary this morning to explain the conditions under which it allotted US$1. 9 million for car rental for voters roll update for 45 days. The summon of the NEC officials will in no way affact the Election date of October 14 , 2014 and is in line of the Legislature constitutional duty of oversight . The Plenary of the House took the decision last week, during their Tuesdays sitting in the chamber of the lower house, suggesting that the US$1.9 million was a waste of resources, too much to conduct the a 45 day car rental. Chairman Korkoya has been officially informed, through a communication by the Chief Clark of the House, to appear before the full membership of the house next Tuesday at 11:00am to show cause as to why such amount should be spent loosely and wastefully. According to the communication, failure on his part to convince lawmakers, the money could be reduced to an understandable amount. The NEC last Wednesday confirmed that it has awarded the contract to the Efficient Logistics Services to provide 200 vehicles for the Voters Roll Update, which is to last for forty-five (45) days. The Commission has defended such huge spending on car rentals, saying that the elections were expensive. The National Elections Commission recently announced January 29 to March 21 as the new schedule for the start of the Voters Roll Update Exercise after initially suspending the process due to budgetary delays. NEC Chairman Jerome George Korkoya said the decision followed negotiations with relevant government institutions, including the Public Procurement Concession Commission, which granted waiver to the Commission to allow it award a contract for the hiring of vehicles for the process but PPCC denied granting NEC the approach but rather said it advised the NEC to instead purchase vehicles with that amount . The PPCC Executive Director is also cited to this morning hearing. The US$1.9Million allotted for vehicle rental has sparked serious public debate here with some saying that spending such huge among only on car rental for just forty-five days was not a wise decision. If we need to spend US$3 million on car rental, we will spend it, because elections are expensive, and we have no regret for doing anything of such, Commissioner Jonathan K. Weedor told this paper. We are independent Commission here, and we are not answerable to anybody; so you shouldnt come here and question us about how we spend money here, Commissioner Jeanette A. Ebba-Dividson noted. NEC Co-Chair, Cllr. Sarah Doe vowed that the NEC will not follow any pattern of other government entities, saying We cannot do what every Tom, Dick and Harris is doing around here; we are about to have a very important election; so we will not joke about our functions here. Chairman Korkoya defended: This is the company that we dealt with before; that is why we gave them the contract; in fact, they were the ones that won the bid, and the PPCC process was followed. These assertions attributed to NEC official only suggest that they are answerable to God but they have forgotten that NEC is a recreation of the Liberian Legislature.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 06:29:37 +0000