The Gambia government succumbed to the public outcry on the excessive financial costs of frequent travels of state officials.
The Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs issued a statement yesterday temporarily banning “all Government funded trips except for essential statutory meetings with effect from October 1st, 2018 for the rest of the fiscal year 2018.” The statement came at a time when President Barrow is, with a large government entourage, on a trip to New York to attend the United Nations Annual General Assembly meeting. It’s not clear whether this ban also applies to the president, vice president, First Lady Fatou Bah-Barrow and officials in the Office of the President at the State House.
The statement signed by the Minister of Finance, Mambury Njie, states that the temporal travel ban “is necessitated by the overall fiscal slippages on travel and to ensure expenses are within the overall travel expenditure ceiling of the 2018 Budget as approved by the National Assembly; and that the measure is needed to free up spending for social services such as education, health and to engender economic growth and macroeconomic stability.”
“The ban also applies to all Non-Subvented Agencies, State owned Enterprises and Central Bank of The Gambia. This is part of the broader government efforts at fiscal consolidation across all levels of government. This expanded scope will improve the financial position of all the relevant institutions to enable them to pay statutory tax payments and potential dividends to government, where applicable,” the statement concluded.
On September 19th, 2018, the Minister of Finance provided members of the National Assembly with a “summary of travel expenditure by various government…entities over the period January-July 2018.” Total expenditures for government travels costs tax payers, according to independent estimates, approximately D339,000,000 (three hundred thirty nine million dalasis). Calculation by the government estimates the figures at D230,000,000.00 (two hundred thirty million dalasis).
The figures also released by the Minister of Finance stated that the “President’s Dialogue Tour” for two weeks in July 2018 cost tax payers D18,319,667.00 (eighteen million three hundred nineteen thousand six hundred and sixty seven dalasis). The tour on average cost about one million dalasis a day. The constitution of The Gambia, in Section 222(15), requires “The President shall undertake a nation-wide tour at least twice a year in order to familiarise himself or herself with current conditions and the effect of government policies.”
President Barrow also came under widespread criticisms when, shortly before leaving Banjul for the UN meeting in New York, he told reporters that travel expenses for the Office of the President cost just $4 million (four million dollars) for seven months which he said is less than the amount other countries pay for travels by their presidents. He would board a private VISTA JET, which activists on social media said costs from $17,000.00 to $24,000.00 per hour on tax payers.
Shortly after his arrival in New York, activists on social media showed pictures of President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, and President John Magufuli of Tanzania who they said flew to the UN meeting by commercial flights. To many activists and ordinary Gambians these two presidents are true public servants who are genuinely interested in improving the conditions of their people but not merely to enrich themselves through fat salaries, per diems and emoluments at the expense of the poor and destitute of their country.
President Barrow also came under criticism when he appeared at the UN General Assembly meeting with the First Lady Fatoumata Bah-Barrow. Activists who criticized his appearance said the first lady sat at the diplomatic desk which other heads of state and governments do not take their spouses to for a show. Some comments on social media compared her to the former First Lady Zainab Summah-Jammeh who many Gambians believed was a gold digger on the former President Yahya Jammeh.
The first lady also came under public criticism when a Chinese company allegedly deposited approximately $800,000.00 into the bank account of her private foundation. The funds was said to have been transferred to charter another jet for the president’s trip to China. The organizations could not find any evidence of such a flight chartered for the Office of President in December 2018.
Despite the budgetary constraints, the temporal travel ban may have come after taking into consideration all the criticisms levelled against President Barrow as big government globetrotter who travels on expensive private jets begging for donations from foreign countries while wasting the meager resources of his impoverished country.