By: Momodou Justice Darboe
Former finance minister Amadou Sanneh has said that the government spends over D300M on State vehicles annually.
Though the ex-finance minister did not give a breakdown of the expenditure, he warned that the financial burden of the vehicles on the average Gambian is unsustainable.
“These government vehicles that you see being driven around…We adopted a vehicle policy because we knew the government could not sustain the financial burden of their utilization. They consume more than D300M per year,” erstwhile finance minister Sanneh recently told a UDP youth wing meeting in the regional capital, Basse.
Mr. Sanneh explained that because of the financial implications of government vehicles on the man in the street, the UDP-led coalition government decided to look into the issue.
“We discussed it and we decided to cut the expenditure but this government threw our decision overboard. They [government officials] prefer to drive past the peasants in government vehicles, swirling dust into their faces, splashing water on them and showing off,” stated the top UDP official. He added: “They could have invested this money into the health sector to improve health service delivery for women and children…procure drugs but that’s not their priority.”
According to Mr. Sanneh, the coalition government was able to enjoy considerable donor goodwill in 2017 after donors pledged in Brussels 1.4 billion euros to Gambia’s development in all sectors such as health, education and youth development.
“Barrow himself had acknowledged that even birds would have their fair share of the money if raised. They made that initiative [donors conference] a futile effort and it’s not us that they’ve deprived of this essential funding but Gambians.
“The West would not give you their money and stand idly by and watch. When UDP left the government, it became riddled with corruption. From one corrupt practice to the other,” he stated.