Speaking at the maiden Cabinet retreat held at the Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara Centre, VP Joof also revealed that The Gambia College would be divided into three, namely the school of agriculture, Nursing, and Public Health which will be attached to the university, while the school of Education will stand alone and will have a teacher university education.
“The PTC will be updated to the level of HTC or advanced diploma. The quality of education is as good as the quality of teachers. If the teachers are poorly educated, obviously the students will be poorly educated and it has a contagion factor on the society.”
On security he said: “We will have to mobilise resources for them to be more effective. We don’t have to take security for granted. We have to make the security more effective, efficient, and professional so that they can earn the respect of the people. It is unacceptable for an officer to stop people on the road and ask for ‘ataya’ or breakfast. The minister of Defence, Interior, and other security heads should be more proactive to bring that kind of discipline.”
“Preventive security is more important than offensive security. If you have solid intelligence and invisible SIS, it will be more effective. We appreciate them and we are grateful but they need to be more effective. We will help you to extend your professionalism and professionality in protecting lives, properties, and the sovereign integrity of this country.”
On Civil Service
Dr. Joof said the civil service is the engine of ideas, programs, and projects, saying to have an effective and efficient civil service, the government needs to have an intermural focus on the civil service, do an assessment, profiling, have a baseline, set benchmarks, and design a performance structure which will include other things like preserving training, long and medium-term and in-service training to bring people up to speed.
“I want to address this particular thing at the ministry of environment and is the issue of deforestation and timber and this is where the security comes in. It taught us the intelligence men to think how truckload with timbers can leave LRR and pass all the security officers to the checkpoints to reach the ports. We have security and inspection at the ports. Something is fundamentally wrong in that and the security and the ports have to fix it or they are answerable to government.”
