By: Nyima Sillah
James F Mendy, CEO of Humanitarian and Peace Assistance Organization has condemned government leave-work-early memo, insisting the state should always be neutral between practising religions in the country.
Mr Mendy’s condemnation comes barely two weeks since the government issued a memo asking female staff to officially close from work at 14:00pm in order to go home and prepare meal known as iftar for their families to break the daily fast in the Holy Month of Ramadan.
This has so far attracted condemnation among activists and feminists.
“Government should avoid taking religious matters into governance. If the government thinks that during fasting, they should allow women to go early then they have to know that we have two religions in the country and they have to treat both religions equally,” Mr Mendy said.
“This is not a problem between religious groups because it was not written by any religious group. It is the government of the people that wrote the memo,” he added.
According to him, even though the government is a secular government it is a government of all Gambians and should treat all people and religions equally he argued.
“I don’t think Christians would make it a big problem because in Christianity fasting should not stop people from working and the way Christians fast is different from the Muslims. No need for Christians to go early during the lent but if they say Muslim women show close early then what about the Christian women? This is where discrimination come in even though Christians don’t prepare iftar like Muslims does but just because it is given to other religion it will be seen as discrimination,” he noted.
James also added that the released memo will have a huge negative impact in the work places and it will lower down development for that particular month. Adding that places like hospital are very important for full operational hours of all staff.
“When you look at it from the point of view of national development it does not make any sense at all to spare so much time just to prepare food for households,” he said.
