By Adama Jallow
The Vice President of the Republic of The Gambia, Dr Alieu Badara Joof has urged the security, at the end of the two days maiden cabinet retreat, to disable all forms of crimes in The Gambia, three months down the line.
He made these remarks at the Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara International Conference Centre before cabinet ministers, security personnel, and permanent secretaries among other government officials.
As they are runing to win their development goals, Vice President Joof said “we would like to see the security in three months down the line, whether the threats, the muggings and the breaking have gone down, we want to see the effectiveness of the anti-crime unit and the efficiency of the police in these areas.”
He further urged that they would like to see timbers not moving from Upper River Region or Lower River Region all the way to Banjul, and see that they are impound before they get out of Lower River Region, and reported to the Ministry and Police respectively.
“We would not like to see containers of timbers disappearing and nobody can trace them, it is unacceptable for the illegal lugging of timbers. Also we would like to see the Minister of Finance and trade, three months down the line, number of Gambians empowered with rolling LCs to bring in the essential commodities of rice, sugar and flour to ensure that things are affordable. And to the Central Bank, the monitory policy that you will put in place to bring back inflation to a single digit, so that at least it has the impact on affordability,” VP Joof urged.
At the concluded retreat which was earlier engaged with presentations from various participants on the key issues to address, objectives, strategies, timeline and framework by the civil service, security, cost of living, land among other sectors, VP Joof said they started with the retreat to know some of the issues in details systematically, objectively, professionally for the first time, and that they have brand discussions at the level of the groups dispassionately in various groups, color blindly and professionally to come up with strategic things that would address some of the pressing issues in the short, medium and long term to alleviate some of the concerns of the Gambian people.
He added that there will be a cabinet paper, which the cabinet endorsed on the steps outlined during the retreat, this paper would be presented for endorsement to enable its immediate implementations.
“Three to five months down the line, at the level of cabinet we should be able to look back at the Ministry of Public Service together with the office of the Vice President in consultation with the respective sectors to ask for performance indicators on how far have you gone in your respective Ministries in implementing the recommendation of the retreat and report to the executive as a whole. If there are constrains, let us know, and on the basis of that we will be able to trace our steps again and see how we can recalibrate things to have maximum implementations for maximum impact on the lives of the Gambians. It will continue like that until we realize our goals. That is important for everybody and that is why we occupy these positions,” he said.
Commenting on the retreat, he said in interactions like this, they always have moments of character to build, because they have divergent views with certain character challenges.
He also mentioned that they would like to see what strategies the tourism has put in place so that at least all other things been equal externally, with no rise in Covid-19, and in terrorism, and what are the projected numbers that are expected. He further mentioned that three to four months, they would like to have an update on how far they have gone to reform the civil service. Likewise the laying of the foundation stone for the establishment of the new university as well as the progress at Faraba Banta so at least the big schools at the UTG move to Faraba Banta.
