It will also coincide with the Christian feast of Lent, which falls on 5 March.
This Holy Month is characterised with total devotion to God Almighty and repentance, seeking Allah’s blessing. It is a period that Muslims should show compassion and love towards one another.
On the contrary, in The Gambia this is a month during which business men and women, especially supermarket owners, shopkeepers and even local fish vendors, out of sheer greed increase the prices of their products.
Also, these supermarket businesses would not stop at that, but would even go the extra mile to hoard essential food items to create unnecessary shortage in the local market just to enable increase of food prices to the disadvantage of many households in the country.
As such, it is high time the Ministry of Trade issued a stern warning to such supermarket owners and local shopkeepers as the nation fast approaches the holy month of Ramadan. As Muslims, Ramadan should be a month to show love and care for one and another.
Mr President, during your recent interview with QTV you did talk about price hikes of basic food commodities, which is also due to the congestion of vessels at the ports, leading to high cost of demurrage charges.
In light of this, The Gambia Ports Authority should always give priority to basic food commodities especially during the Holy Month of Ramadan in view of the fact that the higher demurrage paid, the higher prices of commodities get, as the increase in the charge is transferred to the cost of commodities.
Yes, The Gambia is a liberal market where government doesn’t interfere in fixing prices of basic food commodities. However, Government also has the right to create a conducive and friendly business atmosphere, where such unfavourable business misconduct will be a thing of the past, to safeguard the plight of consumers.
Promoting the rights of consumers would greatly help people and deter businesses from such unnecessary hoarding of goods and over-pricing.
Financial malpractice
Mr President, financial malpractices is another growing phenomenon showing its ugly head in the country’s workforce. In light of this, the Gambia Police Force has forwarded alleged financial malpractices involving officials from 9 institutions to the Attorney General’s Chambers for recommendations. It is important to state here that people are anxiously awaiting the outcome of this case.
Also, we commend the Auditor General and his team and the Finance and Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly for their diligent work in exposing financial mismanagement of government funds. Mismanagement of public funds retards development and erodes public trust in institutions especially the very individuals involved.
To this end, your government should take a firm stance against corruption and officials hell-bent on mismanaging public funds. People would always want to take advantage of situation.
In this vein, we call for the establishment of the Anti-Corruption Commission to deter corrupt officials and corruption generally. Also, any corrupt officials found wanting should be prosecuted without delay. This we believe would ensure that public officials deliver as expected without having to squander funds meant for national development.
Mr President, in the recent past, your government made a bold move to increase salaries of civil servants by 30%, which took effect last month. And this has been the third time since you assumed office in 2017. This is a good move which motivates the civil servants.
And the judiciary is also playing a crucial role in nation building; hence judicial officials should be included in the salary increase to motivate them to promote and strengthen good governance and the rule of law.
We also commend the Personnel Management Office (PMO) through the minister for Public Services and his staff for detecting 2700 staff in fourteen (14) ministries who were not reporting for work. The minister further told the media that “government every month now saves D13.5 million” from resources that used to go to unseen or ghost workers.
Some of these unseen workers were not traced or identified by the audit team that visited schools, agriculture, health facilities and other ministries, departments and agencies during the nationwide head counting of civil servants in the country.
In fact, this reminds us that the issue of unseen workers remains a key challenge in many developing countries and the Gambia is included. This dishonest and unforgivable practice costs the country a lot.
We only hope government would take drastic action against culprits of this practice, who over the years, had siphoned and hijacked funds that could have been utilised to buy medications for our patients at the hospitals or to invest in basic services in the country.
Good day!
Editorial of The Point