By: Haddy Touray
Erudite Gambian economist Morro Gaye has contended that the attempt by the Office of the Clerk of the National Assembly to give the impression that the National Assembly Salaries and Pensions Bill was not crafted to increase the pay or allowance of legislators was an affront to the collective intelligence of Gambians.
Last Tuesday, the Office of the Clerk of the National Assembly issued a press release, stating that the National Assembly Salaries and Pensions Bill, 2024 including the Schedule to the Bill does not in any way increase the legislators’ pay or allowances. The clerk’s office said the billhas been misrepresented in the public space.
Earlier on Tuesday, the information minister Dr. IsmailaCeesay also hinted in an interview with Coffee Time withPeter Gomez that the discourse around the bill shows the lackof understanding of it as, in his own words, the increases hadalready been effected.
However, eeconomist Morro Gaye stressed that the bill thatwas tabled at the legislature ostensibly to promote transparency and accountability in respect of the renumerations and pensions of members of the National Assembly failed to provide any indications of the salaries and allowances that each member is getting on a monthly basis. This, he went on, rendered the press release of the Office of Clerk misleading and demonstrative of reckless disregard for the concerns of the public.
“Section 95 of the 1997 Constitution did not state the number and value of each allowance that members are currently receiving in addition to their basic salaries. It also failed to show any indication of gratuity payments for those serving beyond one year of service. It remains a challenge to address the underlying injustices of paying each member of the National Assembly a whopping D50,000.00 as basic car allowance, which is in excess of the usual basic car allowances paid to ordinary civil servants and those in other public institutions. As a matter of fact, paying housing allowance of D40,000.00 to the Speaker when he continues to reside in his own residence is unconscionable. The press release did not address this abnormality,” Mr. Gaye pointed out.
He argued that there was no gainsaying that the main reason for paying “this huge D50,000.00 car allowance is only meant to offset the monthly loan deduction of about D40,000.00 for the Prado vehicles which, he further argued, to all indications have been given to lawmakers for free and not as a loan as Gambians are made to believe.
“This accounting trickery which immensely benefited the MPs show the total disregard for due diligence and proper accountability of public funds. Deceiving the people, who elected these members into office, should be the last thing that the National Assembly members should be doing,” he lamented.
He stated that the sheer controversies generated by the bills for the judiciary, the legislative salaries and pensions were justified.
“The only thing that genuine lawmakers must do now is to completely reject the bill and focus on addressing the terrible economic situations of the lowly-paid nurses, teachers, drivers including those in the civil service and the security personnel, whose retirement benefits continue to be extremely precarious,” Gaye underscored.
“As reliable sources indicated, the huge discrepancies in the remunerations of top officials in the three arms of government did not align with the approved integrated pay scale in the civil service. According to the current salary structure, the President is the highest-paid civil servant in the country with a fixed monthly salary of D255, 000, followed by the Speaker at D204,500.00 per month, then the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court judges with a gross of D189,655.00 and D149,500, respectively. He continued:“TheMembers of Parliament earning a gross salaryof D145, 397.00 is more than the salary and allowances of the Vice President of the Republic, which is D124, 147.00. The average salary in The Gambia has been worked out as less than D7,000.00 with the 65% of the people living on less than $1 a day. Both the judges and the lawmakers are relatively highly paid. Judges in Ghana are currently on strike over payment of 10 months outstanding allowances. Our judges have never experienced such frustrations in The Gambia.”
Mr. Gaye maintained that focusing specifically on gratuities for judges and members of parliament to boost their financial benefits,disregarding other essential workers could be construed as another attempt by the executive to politically bribe those at the other arms of government “as the government had just done for those conflicted media houses as we head to the 2026 elections”.
“All genuine Gambians must be ready to resist any illegal means of vote rigging or voter registration manipulation in the coming elections. As one elderly politician once said: “Elections are stolen not during the day of voting, but years or months before the election”. Politicians must be alert to the menace of illegal voter registration of foreign aliens, buying of voters’ cards and using slush money to bribe the conflicted media personalities, corrupt judges and greedy parliamentarians. The press release from the National Assembly is full of misstatements and half-truths,” he concluded.
