Kebba Ansu Manneh
Former National Assembly Member for Serekunda Central Hon. Halifa Sallah, has challenged Gambian journalists to find out how Constituency Development Fund (CDF) allocated to the national assembly is being utilized by members who received the funds.
The Secretary General of People’s Democratic Organisation for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS) stressed that despite the fund being created during his tenure in office he did not take it.
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, where he shared his party position on the recently concluded councillors by-election in which his party won the Bundungka Kunda Ward.
“The constituency development fund was introduced during our time, there is nothing wrong in taking it if it is there. Analysis has been made…..it is there and you should find out who took it and how they utilized it, that is what the media should do, interrogate every national assembly member to tell us how they spent it,” PDOIS leader challenged Gambian Journalists.
He added: “Personally I refused to take it because if I said anything then they would say this man is very strange but now you see I am free, am not there at the national assembly to antagonize anybody. I am now a sovereign Gambian citizen determine to make my mark in this country, that is why am saying that fund the need to be scrapped.”
The Veteran Lawmaker suggested that the constituency development fund should rather be diverted into the development budgets of the council, adding that such funds can better be managed and utilised by councils to meet the needs of the people.
“That fund should be scrapped because it is promoting self-perpetuating rule of the national assembly members and it is a fund that we utilised from the top and not from the grassroots to bottom.
The Constituency Development Fund is a budgetary allocation that is accorded to the National Assembly and allows parliamentarians to spend up to three hundred thousand dalasis (D300, 000) annually in a bid to carry out certain development initiatives and activities within their constituency.
CDF also allows serving NAMs to cumulatively access development funding to the tune of one and half million dalasi (D1.5 million) during their tenure in office.
Sallah remains unbeaten about the prospect of the three decades old party, highlighting that the party is backed by a strong cohort of young leaders who will be well prepared to take the leadership of the party once they face out from real time politics.
He described the notion that PDOIS is a party run by old men as false perception that is contrary to the realities, adducing that the past national assembly election is a clear indication that PDOIS is backed by a strong cohorts of youth as it filed only one candidate who is above sixty (60) years out of eighteen (18) candidates.
“We had a National Assembly election with eighteen candidates. Only one candidate’s age was above sixty, so is a very young party contrary to what it is ascribed. And if you follow our genesis it was the thirty year old and the twenty year old that established PDOIS,” Sallah explained.
Hon. Sallah recalled that while they were still in their tail end of their youthful age, former President Yahya Jammeh and Co. staged a coup in 1994, arguing that the 22years hard battle to free the country from the former leader made them grey without achieving the leadership of the country.