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| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Momodou |
Posted - 20 Aug 2023 : 12:44:20
Update
RELEASE:- President Barrow Temporarily Suspends All Foreign Travels ( We’ll see )
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His Excellency President Adama Barrow, has effective immediately, suspended all Government foreign travels for the rest of the fiscal year, 2023.
Acting on authority vested in him by Section 76 (1) of the 1997 Constitution of The Gambia and conscious of the need to curb Government expenditure, President Barrow signed the Executive Order suspending all overseas travels by The President, the Vice-President, Cabinet Ministers, Senior Government Officials, Civil Servants and employees across all Government institutions and agencies.
Exempted from this Order are travels to Statutory meetings where The Gambia’s participation is mandatory and foreign trips fully funded by external sources. These exemptions are, however, subject to the prior approval of The President or an authorized official.
Accordingly, all Gambia Government entities are obliged to strictly comply with the Presidential Executive Order by freezing travels in their respective Ministries, Departments or Agencies for the remainder of the 2023 fiscal year.
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Culled from Pa Modou Bojang’s FB page
By Sidi Sanneh |
| 3 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Momodou |
Posted - 20 Aug 2023 : 12:48:22
Are we this gullible?
By Mustapha-Swandi K Darboe
Policy is not what you introduce when you are desperate. If you are convinced that certain travels are not necessary or worth the money spent on them, such travels should never happen in the first place.
There should be a policy that sets certain criteria as to what travel should be approved, and if that is not possible, an approving authority– whoever he is– can approve any travel on its merit.
But it should not be only when government agencies and ministries have finished their travel money, sinking their teeth into other areas, a government desperate for money comes to say “travel ban”.
Why must a travel that can be banned and not have negative impact on efficiency of a government be undertaken in the first place? And curiously, these bans are only announced when they come into effect.
The ban lifts for itself a few days or months later without any announcement as has always been the case.
This is like resuscitating a person after nearly beating a life out of him. Stop the damn beating and resuscitating or you surely will kill him. Soon!
Or are these announcements, which comes almost once every year, for tan-suit, coily hair bretton wood big boys? They do come around for this thing called staff monitoring shit!
How foolish will one be to celebrate it!!! A gullible public will certainly kill a republic! |
| Momodou |
Posted - 20 Aug 2023 : 12:47:13
Covering up Misconduct and Incompetence!
This press release is a clear manifestation of uncontrolled misconduct and incompetence in every sense of the word. It means public institutions either lack effective management policies or whee they exist they are terribly flouted. The fact that the President himself has to take such a decision means there is no control in his government anymore. Things have fallen apart.
So one may ask how are ministers, permanent secretaries, managing directors and director generals running their institutions? How could it be that foreign travel is so easy and rampant that it became a problem? Is there no minoring and accountability system in the public service?
I demand the president to be more transparent here. Show us which ministries, departments and agencies are abusing foreign travels? Which ministers, permanent secretaries and managing directors are traveling more than necessary? The president should tell the public the true story because it appears he is indeed desperate and sick and tired of his government?
Until there’s that transparency then citizens should just throw away this press release as yet another hot air aimed at covering up incompetence, misconduct abd waste of public resources. It was in April 2017 that this president first said he will maintain the SCOT which was created by Yaya Jammeh so he could personally approve foreign travejs.
It is now 7 years and still this president is incapable of bringing discipline and accountability in his own administration! Why?
Since 2017 some of us have been calling for accountability. That the president should uphold the law and abide by high ethical standards. Not only would he rant and threaten people but he in fact became the Chief Law Breaker in town! One cannot count how many times he has violated the Constitution and other laws of the Gambia to the point that the Supreme Court itself had to discipline him in for unconstitutional sacking of parliamentarian.
What this press release therefore manifests is that the chickens are coming home to roost. Things are falling apart and the center cannot hold. Governing is not a joke. It is not magic. It is a science guided by laws and ethics.
If you refuse to abide by the law and ethics as the leader rest assured those you lead will follow suit. How many times has this president chattered a flight and carry uncountable number of people around the world unnecessarily? How can you therefore complain about foreign travels today? Practice what you preach and preach what you practice in public and in private if you have integrity.
I hereby demand that Pres. Adama Barrow to tell citizens which public institutions and officials were abusing foreign travels? That’s what should interest us as citizens. We must demand that those institutions and officials are held accountable and refund the cost of those unnecessary travels. Anything less is empty talk.
This press release is unfair as it shames and punishes all public officials when some have never abused foreign travels. Therefore in the interest of transparency and accountability let the President name the culprits that warranted this press release.
By the obligations imposed on him in the Access to Information Act, he has a duty to be open and honest to Gambians! Until then this is a meaningless press release that only exposes the failure and incompetence of his leadership!
For the Gambia Our Homeland
By Madi Jobarteh |
| Momodou |
Posted - 20 Aug 2023 : 12:45:46
The President issued an executive order today purporting to suspend all overseas travel with one or two exemptions for the rest of the fiscal year which has three and half more months to go . The reason cited was to save taxpayers money . The statement did not specify what the amount saved would be . I believe the statement is a public relations gimmick and not a substantive policy initiative that will actually save a butut . A more likely explanation is that the government has exhausted the travel budget it allocated for this year and because of the devastating debt burden they have saddled the country with at nearly D110billion more than half of which was incurred in just the last 6 years , they are in no state to borrow more through a supplementary budget request . So being out of money and unable to borrow , they opted for this phony baloney announcement of stopping overseas travel. I challenge every ministry and the office of the president as well as our corrupt and useless parliament to produce an itemized breakdown of their travel budgets for 2023 and let the citizens see what they have spent to date and what is left for the remainder of the fiscal year . Only then can any talk of purporting to save taxpayers have any merit and based on facts .
If the administration wants to truly stop the industrial scale looting that a few dozen high ranking officials beginning with the president and his wives who combined are fleecing untold millions in travel expenses from the treasury , it should start by not allocating the hundreds of millions it puts in the annual budget for travel in the first place . They deprive poor citizens in the budget , and put it there for the few top level government officials to withdraw through these fraudulent travel schemes . It is nothing more than legalized cheating of our country . If the entire travel and per diem expenditure is analyzed, it will be established that less than one percent of the entire civil and public servants are taking all these hundreds of millions a year . It is a racket consisting of senior government officials who prepare the very budgets and those handful of people in the travel agency business .
By Karantaba Touray |
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