By Landing Colley
Top government officials has disagreed on points during a committee session at the National Assembly, as official of finance ministry challenged deputy commissioner of petroleum on government allocation of money to public enterprises.
Kanni Touray, deputy commissioner of petroleum and Lamin Fatty acting director of Public Private Partnership under ministry of Finance argued budget allocation on Monday during the reviewing of petroleum commission Bill 2020 by National Assembly select committee on public enterprise and environment sustainable development and NGO affair.
“Monies are been appropriated by the national assembly whether they are given the monies is another issue but when it comes to laws, they are given the money by the government, because is a public enterprise whether autonomous or not. We don’t want much interfering from the ministry, so that is we stress that for it been a separate body,” Kanni Touray, deputy commissioner of petroleum told the committee.
According to Mrs Touray, clause 19 sub- clauses (2) which talks about budget of the commission is not referring to the direct general budget of the national assembly.
For his part, Lamin Fatty acting director of Public Private Partnership under ministry of Finance opposed Mrs Touray saying: “the government is not given any fund to public enterprise, we only come in to bail you out when there are some financial constrain.”
He added: “Clause 17 (d) in our recommendation we want you to remove the ministries out of it simply because we want you advert direct interference.”
Fatty told the select committee of the House that monies pay to the bank account is approved by the board, revealing that with regard to public financial instruction all government account being a private is open by the account general department.
