Post a comment
The Ministry of Planning and Economic Development has warned that NGOs and INGOs operating without signed SLAs and proper registration will face legal action, following a directive to stop temporary approvals for non-funded projects.
The Director of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, Eric Masalay, stated that following a press release issued to discontinue the issuance of temporary approval for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) of non-funded projects, any NGO or INGO operating without a signed SLA and proper registration with the government will face the full force of the law.
He made this disclosure during an exclusive interview in his office on Tower Hill in Freetown. He said if there is any NGO that has started operations before a “Gayset which they will soon be issued out there is going to be a three week grace period before an extensive verification exercise with the law enforcement agencies, Mr. Masalay emphasized.
He encouraged all with temporally approved projects which are not fortunate to attract funding from donors, to go to their line Ministry and sign the SLA, adding that their main focus is to identify organizations that came to complement the effort of government as well as sanitizing the NGO sector thereby protecting donor funds given to the people of Sierra Leone.
He said based on their monitoring, they had found out that many NGOs have not signed the Service Level Agreement with their line Ministries, but most times implement projects which do not meet the expected outcome of the people or donor partners.
The Director further said the Press Release issued out is to further discontinued the issuance of temporal approval for Service Level Agreement of non-funded projects, but encourage all to attract funding for their projects and sign the SLA through their line Ministries.
He concluded by saying the “Gayset” which they will soon publish will show organizations who are registered and those that have not registered with government as well as projects that has received funding, adding that only funded projects that are aligned with the “Medium Term National Development Plan” will be processed by line Ministries and inputted to the NGO Partnership Mapping Tool.
