Delivery with effective services do constantly keep urging us to accept the fact that our own civil service is a structure weakened within its own modus operandi which is why our secretary general and by extension the executive must work hard towards reviving structures like PMO and PSC without any further delay.
Mr. President, these two institutions are enriched and empowered by existing codes of conduct which should be revised per se. Everything begins and ends in application practically not theoretically. PMO and PSC must be restructured to continue serving as platforms that can support functionality in various sectors or units. Impartiality is never easy within the complexities in human nature but practice definitely makes perfect. Both recruitment and promotion should be done by merit not political partisan or tribal.
Mr. President, it is important for the civil servants to fast track files for administration and financial matters. There are a lot of bureaucracies which take time before files are treated. Most of the civil servants spend most of their time in long meetings whilst much work piles on their desks.
The secretary general and head of the Civil Service should organise a meeting with all permanent secretaries and their deputies to discuss how best to improve their works to avoid the delaying of files for several days before they are treated as this hampers production.
The workplaces of civil servants should also be properly furnished with adequate and required facilities, allocate loans to them to build houses or buy cars or even fans and fridges for their houses as was done in the first republic. This will motivate them.
Finally Mr. President the recommendation by ECOWAS to gradually reopen land, air and sea borders for restoring cross border economic activities is timely. Since March, thousands of ECOWAS citizens have been stranded because of the border closure.
The recommendation by ECOWAS to reopen land borders will enable the country to revive the transit trade which is the third earning of foreign exchange after agriculture and tourism.
The absence of the transit trade has affected the economy of the country which leads to decreased value of the dalasi weekly and loss of revenues to Gambia Revenue Authority.
Many truck drivers, apprentices and labourers have been out of the job since March.
Now the land borders are going to reopen, officials of the Ministry of Trade should invite the business community to see how best to improve the transit trade.
Heath officials should be given all the necessary support to fight the pandemic which could be around for long time, God forbid.
The government through Ministry of Health should try to provide thousands of face masks for people to be using as a means to put the pandemic under control. Wearing face mask must be mandatory for everyone going public to allow business to flow as usual particularly in our markets, mosques and churches and in vehicles.
The government should make it her business to produce locally and durable face masks for free distribution just as Senegal did. This will help control the spread of the virus once our borders are open.
Good day!