By: Momodou Justice Darboe
One-time CEO of the Brikama Area Council (BAC) Mam SaitJallow has informed the Local Government Commission of Inquiry (LGCI) that BAC was dependent on bank overdrafts to pay staff salaries during his tenure.
Mr. Jallow was recycled as the BAC CEO in 2014 after holding the post from 1996 to 1998.
In an earlier appearance before the commission on April 30th, Jallow said BAC had no functional and effective audit unit. He explained that the council was challenged by human resource capacity constraints to make the unit functional, adding that itwas manned by not more than three staff. The witness said he received either one or two audit reports during his tenure, spanning from 2014 to 2019. He attributed the lack of periodic reports to capacity challenges, saying the principal auditor was not preparing reports.
“As you are saying, the principal auditor was not qualified to man that office,” concluded LGCI deputy lead counsel Patrick Gomez.
“I am not saying that. There was a capacity gap and he was not preparing reports,” said Jallow.
On the deputy lead counsel’s query as to how he was monitoring the revenue collectors, the erstwhile BAC CEO said he verbally instructed the council’s finance director at the time to deal with issues raised in audit reports about staff under his [finance director] purview. He pointed out that the council used to confront revenue collectors with the audit findings to elicit a response, saying that it was only later that he came to know about the fraudulent activities of collectors such as falsification of revenue figures.
“Collectors were manipulating the receipts,” former CEO Jallowtestified on Tuesday.
In his testimony before the commission on Thursday, the witness said he never contracted a loan in the council’s name.
“We only take overdrafts to pay salaries,” he stated in response to questions about loans and overdrafts that the BAC contracted during his tenure.
He was, however, told by the commission that he contracted loans in the council’s name to pay salaries as indicated on the council’s bank statement.
He was ordered to produce the documents, including the request letters for the loans and overdrafts on or before his nextcommission appearance.
