By Adama Makasuba
Momodou Sabally, the former Secretary-General and heads of civil servants, has told President Adama Barrow to stop spending state resources “wastefully.”
“I want to urge Barrow to be careful of how he is spending the country’s resources because he doesn’t own it. He must know that the resources he is spending belong to those who voted for him and those who didn’t vote for him. I am not saying Barrow should not be a diplomat and spend resources, but let him do it the right way for the benefit of the country. The way you are running the affairs of the country is not in the interest of the country, because these appointments were not in the budget for this year,” he said.
“We heard from reports that President Barrow has appointed fourteen diplomats to different positions in foreign embassies. And that’s not something new in this country, but I have not seen any Gambia government from Jawara-era to Jammeh-era appointing such a huge number at a go. They are not even people who are well-versed in diplomacy, I am not saying that anyone who doesn’t study diplomacy should be appointed as an ambassador but you should have some criteria to it.”
“What angers me more is that Barrow’s government plans to spend an amount to 135 million dalasis on the appointments of diplomats who everyone knows are based on politics and the interest of himself and his government. That’s not a problem. But appointing people who lost the National Assembly election because people don’t trust them and they were voted out of the office and he gave those people positions to appease them,” he added.
“For him to take 135 million dalasis and spend on those people to me is a waste of state resources and the country’s resources shouldn’t be wasted because the country has not enough resources to even run its affairs. The 135 million dalasis could have been spent on other issues like agriculture and other burning issues like the flood victims. If you are appointing one diplomat to places like Russia and China, what you would pay him for his clothing and pocket money is more than a million dalasis, which excludes his salary. You will spend at least 1.3 million dalasis on a deputy ambassador excluding his salary,” he divulged.
