The allowances owed to these personnel are more than D2 million dalasis, The Point has been reliably informed.
A source who is familiar with the matter and wished to speak on the condition of anonymity confirmed the development, saying “many PIU personnel were deployed to each of the presidential candidates during the campaign with the objective of ensuring peace and stability during the campaign period.”
“Thirty-three PIU personnel were attached to the United Democratic Party (UDP); 33 PIU personnel were for Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC); 22 for PDOIS; 22 Independent candidate Essa Mbaye Faal and 22 for National Unity Party (NUP).”
Our reporter has been informed that the issue of unpaid allowances has even caused anger within the affected PIU personnel especially among the junior officers.
Each of the PIU personnel that went for the campaign with a presidential candidate was supposed to be paid D1, 500 per day, according to our source.
“The affected PIU personnel spent 13 days in rural Gambia. Therefore, each of them was to be paid D19, 500 in total.”
“But still now they don’t receive their money. In fact, the police high command in Banjul should have settled the payment issue before the affected officers departed for the campaigns,” our source said.
“I can confirm to you that none of the PIU personnel that went with the presidential candidates has been paid his allowance. The police high command is supposed to pay us our money because we have already signed a form at the Police Finance Department. In fact, before we even left for the campaign, our Finance Department paid each of us D1,500. This D1,500 was just given to us as a credit. The Finance Department was supposed to take back the D1,500 from us had we received our monies,” our source said.
“We understand that some of the PIU officers and even some soldiers that went with the president during the campaign have already been paid. Now the question is why did the police high command fail to pay us our monies?
Lamin Njie, the spokesperson of The Gambia Police Forces (GPF) couldn't be reached for comments at the time of going to press.
