By Landing Colley
Vice President Dr Isatou Touray has told lawmakersthat there are ‘clear reasons’ why eleven staff of Food Security and Quality Assurance were dismissed.
Eleven staff of FSQA got fired from the authority in January amid their longstanding revolution against the head of the authority. Thirteen were put on administrative leave while one was suspended.
Responding to questions at the national assembly on Wednesday, Dr Touray said: “there are clear reason why eleven staff where dismiss persistence on administrative live and warn with three-month suspension without pay at the FSQA.”
“After a petition written by several staff of the authority against the Director General in October 2019 was sent to the office of the Vice President, Secretary General and Head of Civil Service, office of the President, the national assembly and circulated all over social media and press. An official sit-down strike was undertaken by this staff leading almost to complete stoppage of all inspection of the authority.
During that period from October 2019 to date most of this staff were involve in organizing a meeting inside and outside the office premises, refuse to carry out any orders from the supervisor and management and also subjected other staff to harassment and insult,” she added.
She said once the staff got the director general dismissed that they started upon receipt of their long term posting from June 2019 which they refuse to comply. She added that “at the end of the month deferral petitioner still refused to comply with any instruction from their supervisors and management and against the posting orders and insisted that they will not go without the resolution of the petition.”
According to her, under the Gambia Government code of conduct manual section (6.11) refusal to comply with a posting order is consider a gross misconduct.
She said the staff of FSQA are now all reinstated and given opportunities with warning letters to come back to the institution, after realizing that the rule governing the institution were not sign, adding “we are going to make sure that we bring them back and work on the reforms work on the reforms.”