By Adama Makasuba
Opposition Citizens’ Alliance party has said its government will eradicate corruption in the country and diversify the economy to help create more jobs for Gambians.
Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Dr Ismaila Ceesay CA’s presidential candidate for December poll promised that his administration will reform the civil service and state-owned enterprises.
“The Citizens’ Alliance government promises to diversify our economy to drive growth and jobs creation. Not only that we promise to reform the civil service and state-owned enterprises to eradicate corruption,” he told reporters.
He added: “There is no transparency in how public funds are managing currently in the country and there is serious misuse of corporate assets. We are going to stop all that.”
“These are bold and ambitious promises,” he said, adding that “we are not saying we are going to reduce or fight corruption [but] we are going to eradicate it and we are very serious about it.”
Dr Ceesay also a senior political science lecturer at the University of The Gambia blamed the government for what he called the failure of the state-owned enterprise in “providing services and dividends to government.”
According to him, there are high levels of demotivation in the civil service saying “there are no incentives for civil servants and salary is low” and that “professional ethics is a problem.”
“We all know now that the civil service is not motivated especially the civil servants. There is high level of demotivation [and] there is no incentives [and] salary is low,” he said.,
He said his government will reduce and change some ministries to new ministries that will tackle challenges face with country and reverse payroll for civil servants to get better pay base on merits.
CA’s comment came a day after a survey by Afrobarometer said that 61% of Gambians say corruption is on the rise and the government is not doing enough to combat it.