I had earlier decided not to pursue this line of arguement after posting President Jammeh's address to our new National Assembly members but changed my mind after I read Halifa Sallah’s contribution in the current National Assembly debates and some reactions to it.

I my opinion, he has touched on some very important isuues that Gambians should try to focus on for our common good. Being no expert in politics or economics, I will give my personal opinion about some of the issues that I believe have been or are still hampering our development efforts.

TAX COLLECTION

In The Gambia, it seems that the only honest taxpayers are those in gainful employment in the formal sector and our poor farmers. This has been and is still the case. Our income tax department, rather than coming up with effective means of making sure that everyone is paying his/her taxes according to their income and mode of business, are happy to apply simple formulae to make it easy for them to collect revenue and account for it.

I don’t know if it has changed, but when lived in England in the 80s, the way sales and income tax for most businesses was monitored was by way of ensuring that all businesses invest in cash till machines. These machines had a sealed tamper-proof chip that the taxman regularly changes. He would walk to a business when they are not very busy, politely requests to change the chip after proving his I.D and walks away with the chip. The whole thing lasts only a few minutes. At the tax office, they would read and record all the transactions that had taken place for the period in question and the right tax that should be paid to the government recorded.

Unfortunately, this is not so in our country. Here we have major businesses giving out manual receipts on all sorts of paper that never reflect their real income. Occasionally a corrupt custom officer would brandish his credentials, threaten to close the business (Open call as we say) to a point that he is bribed a thousand or two thousand Dalasis. The guy can repeat the same feat time and again when he is in need of money. This is particularly prevalent in the hospitality sector such as bars, restaurants and hotels.

THE GPMB AND COOPERATIVE UNION

There is no doubt in any one’s mind that these two institutions were among the best in the country in the 70s. They were very profitable and employed hundreds, if not thousands of Gambians. In the case of the GPMB, we had oil from our groundnuts, groundnut cake for livestock and even boards from the shell. What happened next is still unbelievable to me. The GPMB, which had yearly revenues running into several million Dollars, was ravaged by corruption and all its funds pilfered before our very eyes. Its sale to Alimenta finally snuffed out its last breath.

As for the cooperative union, what happened there is simply mind-boggling. Year in year out, people thought it their sacred duty to steal our poor farmers’ money. Nothing killed the cooperative union other than greed and corruption.

THE AREA COUNCILS

The area councils, which were supposed to extend the accountability of central government to the grassroots, were an abysmal failure in many respects. Any one appointed as an Executive Officer (EO) saw it as a way of becoming a Mansa and pilfered most of the revenue they collected from our poor lot. This, the did before our very eyes and nobody did a darn thing about it. Instead we prided ourselves of knowing them and praising them for being worthy sons. "Ki day, Ndeyam sai nadeh", they would say (meaning the guy is a worthy son). We encouraged them to impregnated young schoolgirls while naming our children after them. They are a disgrace to all Gambians, the lot of them!

EXPLOSIVE POPULATION GROWTH

While all these dismal things were happening, Gambian men tried to show their masculinity by establishing baby factories. While our women folk were busy trying to bring food to the table we, the men, were busy making babies. In less than twenty-five years, we have more than doubled our population. Some did it legitimately, whilst others specialized in luring young schoolgirls of the age of their children.

ENERGY

Energy has been a major stumbling block towards the creation of jobs and a diversification of our economy for decades now. For the past two decades we have been plagued with this problem without much intervention from government until of late. The fact that our erratic power supply has wrecked havoc in every household is clear to all. Many have lost expensive equipment as well as entire residences due to power surges. Our electricity is reported to be the most expensive in Africa and yet we still have to live with its infrequent availability and fluctuations. Not only is it hampering development by making those who rely on it for their income and livelihood such as the welders, carpenters and tailors, it is contributing to the high cost of everyday commodities. Supermarkets, hotels, restaurants, government offices, you name it, and everywhere people need to have a standby generator. The capital expenditure of this is extremely high, its running cost unsustainable and the noise unbearable. And, at the end of the day it is the ordinary people who bear the brunt of it all in the form of increased cost of goods and services.

Take Gamtel for example. In most of our branches, we need to have at least one standby generator whilst in bigger sub-stations we need two standby generators. Those who are familiar with the cost of generators and their running cost would tell you that a 350 KVA generator is an expensive investment let alone its running cost. These machines are huge and extremely noisy which requires them to be housed in purpose-built houses. In the GBA, Gamtel has no less than five such machines. In most of our provincial stations, the capacity of the generators can range from 25 KVA to 50 KVA. In such stations, and there are more than thirty of them, we need to have two standby generators in each station. This is because you cannot continuously run one for more than, say eight hours especially in this heat. Now imagine the capital cost of buying these generators in the first place as well as their running cost. As a telecommunications company, if have to invest such colossal sums of money in generators, diesel, buildings to house them and staff to maintain them, wouldn’t it affect how much our customers have to pay if we are to remain profitable? This is one of the reasons why I welcome President Jammeh’s pledge to tackle our energy crisis head on.

RIVER TRANSPORT.

This is another area that is very dear to me. Any right thinking Gambian knows that our river is one of the most navigable in the sub-region. Ocean going vessels used to go as far as Kuntaur Wharf Town, some 300 KM inland. We also used to have a flotilla of tugboats and barges that transported goods up and down the river. We used to have steamers that transported goods and people the length and breadth of the country, sub-region and Europe. Because of this we had several prosperous towns throughout the country and cross-border trade with other countries in the sub-region thrived.

Even though this government hasn’t done much to remedy this lamentable situation, I cannot, in the life of me, understand why the previous government effectively killed this mode of transport. Whilst our river transport is being vandalised, the government was busy building us 15 concrete wharfs only for Sir Dawda to use when travelling in his Mansa Killas and Mansa Killabas.

In his contribution in the National Assembly, the member for Nianija lamented the fact that whereas matches cost 25 Bututs in the GBA, in his constituency the same matches cost 50 Bututs. The reason? The high cost of transporting goods to the provinces.

EDUCATION

Any honest Gambian who has been in the country eight years ago and wanted a place for someone in most primary and junior secondary schools, knows that in most cases one had to use influence or bribery to get a place for a child. Any honest Gambian who was in the country eight years ago would tell you that even though less than 40% of children of school going age had access to schools, parents were expected to provide them not only with books, uniforms and pens, but had to provide them with chairs to sit and desks to write on. It is equally true that computers were unheard of in our schools, our labs were not well equipped and schools were extremely scarce. Intelligent students dropped out of school because the state had failed them due to the limited places available or the high cost of maintaining one in school. This government in less than seven years had reversed this trend. There is no senior secondary school that has no computers let alone furniture.

We, in Gambia, know very well that even though the government has tackled many of the ills in our society, we also recognise that it has a lot more to do. This is what many Gambians have recognized. This, my friends, explains why most Gambians support the APRC government despite all the hullabaloo from many quarters, particularly from those of you who are out of touch with our realities while assuming that we are somehow stupid or gullible. We know what we want and for that we will support and work with this government through thick and thin. Call us mental midgets, sycophants or whatever you want, one thing I know is that any honest Gambian who comes to The Gambia will be surprised by our resilience, dedication, purposefulness and resolve to make a better world for us and for generations yet unborn.

Have a good day, Gassa.