There is growing concern regarding the Security Sector Reforms (SSR) process that was launched by Government of President Adama Barrow in 2019, especially with the current recruitment exercises that is ongoing among various security apparatus of the country.
Last month the Gambia Police Force announced the recruitment of men and women into its rank and files following similar recruitment exercise undertaken by the Gambia Armed Forces.
These recruitment exercises raised alarm bells in regard to the embargo places on the recruitment of servicemen and women lifted or not as dictated by the security reforms programme.
“I am very concern about how the security sector reforms programme is been implemented especially that we are witnessing series of recruitment exercises by various security forces. There was an embargo that was placed on the recruitment of servicemen and women into our forces in 2019. And so far, I’m not aware when this embargo was lifted,” our security sources confided to this medium.
According to the source, “The reason for placing a moratorium on recruitment of servicemen and women is to create a buffer zone that will allow proper assessment of the various security forces. The moratorium period was also set to give ways to aging service men to peacefully retire as well as right-sizing and down-sizing of the securities forces.”
The lifting of the moratorium on recruitment has never been announced to the public, adding that Gambian people needs to know how many men and women retires from the various services, how many absconded or awol while on active duty and how many men and women are needed to be recruited and how many are to leave because of their various crimes including those adversely mentioned at the various commissions, the source expressed.
The source went on saying that most of the experts brought into the country to beef up the SSR exercise have already left the country, revealing that most of the senior security personnel deplored to work under the Office of the National Security (ONS) have already been redeployed back to their units. Also, most of the policy documents prepared by drafters have already started gathering dust without implementation, Office of National Security under the National Security Adviser, Momodou Badgie has not been active on the ground.
The Voice Newspaper has contacted Momodou Badgie, National Security Adviser to President Adama Barrow to shed light on the recruitment of servicemen and women, the issue of experts who left as well as the redeployment of various servicemen and women working at the Office of the National Security, but, after series of calls and text messages the National Security Adviser could not be reached for comments.