The House of Parliament has approved the appointment of the first ever Director General of the National Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Brima Baluwa Koroma, and his Board Chairman Michael H. Kendor.
Honourable Mathew Nyuma, the Leader of Government Business, told the House that Baluwa Koroma had held four strategic positions both nationally and internationally including the most recent one as Executive Chairman of the Petroleum Regulatory Agency (PRA) formerly that equipped him with the requisite expertise to be appointed by President Julius Maada as the first Director General of the National Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NPRA).
“Mr Speaker and Honorable Members of Parliament, I must confess to this honorable house that I am very proud of Baluwa Koroma as a young man for his remarkable achievements and reforms he has transformed over the years. When I was invited by the Honorable Chief Minister, Dr David Moinina Sengeh, at State House on the need to critically address the prevailing concerns on the skyrocketing costs on rice, I respectfully suggested to the panel that for us to tackle the growing concerns, we need to have preview of the formulas that Baluwa Koroma and his team used that have led to the current stability and business competitiveness in the industry, Baluwa has proven to Sierra Leoneans that petroleum products aren’t a political products, thus, has maintained absolute stability in the sector”, Hon. Mathew Nyuma noted.
Hon. Joseph William Lamin of Constituency 081 in Bo District lauded President Bio for re-appointing his “own brother from his paternal lineage in Bongor Chiefdom”. He noted that the Director General designate had positively impacted lives in his chiefdom and the district at large, noting that Baluwa had achieved unprecedented successes in the last six years especially in areas like open-doors policy, fair trade, liberalization of the industry, increased petroleum storage capacities, predictable revenue generation for this current dispensation .
The Deputy Leader of Government Business, Hon. Bashiru Sidikie, gave a resounding endorsement on Baluwa’s well-deserved appointment as Director General designate, adding that a lot had been accomplished under his astute and acumen leadership given him an extraordinary reputations amongst his colleague appointees .
However, he emphasized, the Director General needed to take a paradigm shift within the industry as “in recent years, some dealers are constructing gas stations closed to residential areas and they’re not even adhering to the required plots for the construction which is three-town lots, and as such, it’s a recipe for potential inferno in due course”.