Hon. Bashiru Silikie, Chairman of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Works, faced a delegation of construction company representatives across the table in Committee Room 1 of Parliament of Sierra Leone, and the atmosphere, by all accounts, was one of barely contained institutional anger. These were not officials who had been invited for dialogue. They had been summoned. And the chairman intended them to feel the difference.
At the heart of the confrontation was a question that should not require a parliamentary committee to ask but evidently does: are foreign nationals working on Sierra Leone’s publicly funded construction projects doing so with valid work and resident permits? The answer that emerged over the course of the session was, in at least one significant case, no.
Engineer Alfred Jalil Momodu, Director General of the Sierra Leone Roads Authority, led the delegation that appeared before the committee alongside nervous company executives. The tension sharpened considerably when it emerged that a consultant present in the room, a foreign national linked to an ongoing bridge construction project, did not possess a valid work permit to operate in Sierra Leone.
Hon. Silikie did not treat this as an administrative oversight requiring gentle correction. He treated it as what it was: a breach of the law, in plain sight, before a parliamentary oversight committee.
“You don’t have a work permit, and you are working in this country. This is unacceptable,” he said, ordering that the individual be detained until proper documentation could be produced. He called on immigration and labour authorities to intervene, reinforcing a point that ought to be elementary no foreign national works in Sierra Leone without fulfilling the legal requirements for doing so, regardless of the size or prestige of the project employing them.
The instruction to detain a consultant inside a parliamentary committee room is not a routine occurrence. It was a statement of intent, delivered in the most visible forum available, that the committee was prepared to escalate beyond rhetoric.
The permit crisis was not the only problem on display. When the committee turned its attention to the substance of construction projects under review, what emerged was a portrait of professional unpreparedness that compounded the already serious compliance failures.
The consultant in question was linked to an ongoing bridge construction project and was asked to account for it design specifications, execution timelines, overall progress. The answers he provided were neither consistent nor coherent. He disclosed that the bridge measures approximately 125 metres in length and 10.8 metres in width, with designated pedestrian walkways and carriage lanes, and that the project had reached around 69.5% physical completion against financial progress of roughly 64%. These figures, offered under questioning, were the extent of the clarity available.
The committee was not satisfied. Hon. Silikie criticised the consultant directly for appearing before Parliament without the essential documentation that any professional overseeing a project of this scale should carry as a matter of course summaries, drawings, verified progress reports. A consultant who cannot account for his own project, before the committee charged with oversight of that project, is a consultant who raises questions not only about his personal competence but about the supervision structures that allowed him to operate without scrutiny for this long.
Engineer Momodu, for his part, acknowledged the value of parliamentary oversight noting that such engagements have historically helped improve performance and accountability within the sector. It was a measured, diplomatically useful thing to say. He also admitted that funding constraints remain a persistent challenge affecting project delivery, which is a real problem that deserves to be taken seriously alongside the compliance failures.
The two issues are related but distinct. Funding gaps can explain delayed timelines. They cannot explain the absence of work permits, the failure to maintain project documentation, or the decision to send a consultant to face parliamentary interrogation without the basic materials needed to answer for his work. Those failures are not about money. They are about standards and who is enforcing them.
Sierra Leone’s construction sector, particularly in road and infrastructure development, has long operated in a space where foreign companies and expatriate consultants enjoy considerable latitude. The Local Content Policy exists precisely to push back against the tendency of such firms to import labour for roles that qualified Sierra Leoneans could fill and to ensure that those who do bring foreign workers comply with the legal framework governing their presence and employment in the country.
What the Works Committee session laid bare is that compliance with that framework has been treated as optional by some of the largest firms operating in the sector. A consultant working without a valid permit is not an anomaly in an otherwise well-regulated environment. He is a symptom of an enforcement culture that has allowed documentation requirements to become formalities honoured more in their absence than their observance.
Hon. Silikie’s confrontation was dramatic. It was also necessary. The committee’s authority to summon, scrutinise, and demand accountability is one of the few mechanisms available to ensure that public infrastructure spending translates into projects that are professionally managed, legally compliant, and genuinely accountable to the people whose roads and bridges are being built.
The firms have been put on notice. The immigration and labour authorities have been called in. The detained consultant’s papers, presumably, are being located with some urgency.
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Sierra Leone’s infrastructure cannot be built on a foundation of ignored laws and unprepared consultants. Parliament, on this occasion, made that point in terms that were impossible to misunderstand.
