SIERRA LEONE ROADS AUTHORITY (SLRA)

The Department of Works (DOW) was up to 1992, directly responsible for the planning, design and construction of all designated public roads in the country. This responsibility was in addition to other public maintenance activities, such as the maintenance of public buildings and inner channels and ports, with which the Department was charged. Under the circumstances therefore, the DOW became encumbered with more functions than it could handle, in addition to carrying an alarming labour force. This in essence meant that there were very limited resources that could have been dedicated to any effective maintenance of the road network.

The inadequacies of the DOW became glaringly manifest during the implementation of the first and second highway projects of 1971 and 1981 respectively. These were both programmes of road rehabilitation and maintenance, financed through donor support. Both projects failed to achieve any significant institutional building results, as shown by the Project Completion Reports (PRCs).

It therefore came as no surprise that suggestions made by the PRCs, especially after the Second Highway Project, focused among other things on the need to have a project executing agency, free from the day-to-day political interferences and taking steps to seeing that the high idle labour force employed by the DOW was reduced, and establishing a separate highway entity.

The foregoing factors prompted the Government of Sierra Leone and other donor agencies involved in the roads sub-sector to commission a study in 1991, aimed at creating an efficient and effective road management organization. Based on the recommendations of this study, the Government legally established the SLRA in March, 1992, to take over from the DOW the administrative control, planning, development and maintenance of all roads and related structures in Sierra Leone.

As a semi autonomous entity, the SLRA has the authority to hire and fire staff, fix salary levels higher than Government pay scales, sign and award contracts, receive the bulk of its funds for road maintenance from the Road Fund as allowed by parliament, and to levy other road user charges subject to parliament approval.

The Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA) was legally established on March 1, 1993 under the SLRA Act of 1992. The establishment of the SLRA satisfied one of the three elements of the Sierra Leone Government’s strategy for addressing the problems of the road sub-sector that is, to build institutional capacity to better plan and manage, on a sustainable basis, the maintenance, development and control of the country’s road network.

The Authority’s Mission statement is:

Upon re-classification of the country’s road network, on a functional basis, the Authority identified an 8,200km national road network, comprising primary and secondary trunk roads and feeder roads. In addition, there were about 3000km of local roads, comprising rural roads and tracks and urban streets. About 800km of trunk roads were paved (seal or asphalt), as indeed were many urban streets. Other roads were gravel or earth.

The SLRA’s current responsibilities include the administration, control, development and maintenance of all roads and related structures in Sierra Leone.