Mr Jeng,
thank you for raising very important public policy questions in
the overall context of a national budget with specific attention to the roles
or lack thereof of municipalities. I agree with your general argument that a
functional municipal setup can and ought to be an important component of the
national quest to improve the lives of everyday citizens in their
communities. But before I add my views to the question of municipal
governments, I want to take a moment to address a related question you asked
about how our national budget evolves. You are correct to lament the lack of
imput by such profoundly interested parties such as outside civic
organizations, municipal governments, or even various central government
departments. Notwithstanding the fact that you may find a statutory
requirement that says the national budget shall reflect the priorities of the
nation as formulated by it's constituent parts, the reality is the document
read by the Finance Minister in Parliament emanated neither from involvement
nor from process. It is basically put together by an impervious tiny
bureaucracy adept at putting fancy words around high sounding but ultimately
bankrupt ideas because they know it is far rewarding personally to carter to
the whims of their political leaders than doing the hard work of allocating
limited resources to ever increasing needs. The minister of health has no way
of making our budget reflect the healthcare needs of the country because the
budget preparation in reality is not a process driven by merit and need in
which every affected department can appropriately participate. That is why
the document is essentially a witches brew of misplaced priorities,
unrealistic projections that will never be met and a general mess. As an
example when Yahya Jammeh wanted electric generators in the run up to the
elections, the government simply borrowed tens of millions of Dalasis to
finance it because it was not in any of their allocated funding for that
fiscal year. This despite the fact that the energy problem according people
familiar with the Gambian situation is a large and expensive undertaking
that requires a systemic approach to address, generation, transmission and
distribution all of which combine to hobble this very important sector. The
President just wanted to escort machinery with pomp and ceremony in the
streets more as a silly stunt than a prudent approach to address a dire
national need. A budget is like any document, you will only get out of it
value that is commensurate to what you put in it. Unless we have a political
leadership that understands and values their roles as custodians of our
nation's very scarce resources and establish professionally acceptable
procedures based on a transparent process, the tax payer will always end up
with the short end of the stick.
All six municipal governments in our country are nothing more than a
corrupt, lethargic and inefficient bureaucracy that has never ever rendered
even a fair level of service. By law our municipalities are supposed to
collect local taxes from homes, businesses, livestock to use to meet
specified recurrent expenses related to their operations in their
communities. The current government inherited these municipalities that has
long been a den of thieves and installed their own dons to continue business
as usual. Except for KMC which is the largest both in tax base and
population, all of the municipalities are constantly teetering on the brink
of insolvency often relying on bank overdrafts to pay even their handful of
workers. They operate outfits that are closer to being organized rackets than
functional offices. It begins with the revenue collector who is assigned a
specific jurisdiction to both asses a rate and also collect the revenue. In
villages they count the number of huts in a compound plus every single
livestock in that compound. Folks just pay what the collector asks them to
pay and the data on which the rate is based is the first point of corruption.
There is simply no administrative mechanism in place to verify the efficacy
of the data and the collectors supervisor who is the first layer in the
bureaucracy was himself a revenue collector before and knows all about this
gaping loophole. He would take the data at face value after getting a portion
of the revenue collected. He then forwards it to the local government office
where it is further fleeced by the treasurer and the Local government
Officer. By the time revenue collected from a particular jurisdiction is
reflected in the books of the municipality, about half of it is gone to line
the pockets of about half a dozen people. If you think that the poor people
who coughed up the taxes would atleast get half of their rates in services, I
would like to sell you part of Denton Bridge! Once in the local gov't
treasury, the same corrupt bureaucrats would siphon off the better part of it
in kick backs on useless and bogus projects like painting the stem of trees,
'well improvement' feeder road rehabilitation and so on. The local government
officer is always maneuvering to be in the good graces of the divisional
commissioner through whose offices they must laise to consummate all the
bogus projects. The corruption is extended to the commissioner in the way of
gifts of livestock and cash. Most if not all of them tend to be products of
the same local gov't system having been revenue collectors, treasurers and
LGOs.That is why the folks at Kaur and the outlying areas such as Pakala who
dutifully pay in their taxes every year continue to get nothing except
increased rates. The municipalities are like leeches who keep sucking the
blood of people. As currently configured, the municipal bureaucracy is an
unmitigating disaster. The structure, culture and staff cannot deliver any
value to the tax payer. That is why the relatively solvent KMC and BCC are
run like medieval fiefdoms with Laye Konteh and Samba Faal ferociously
battling to keep their jobs against the established laws of the country. They
want to stay in these dens of corruption not because they give a hoot about
the residents. They will continue to overtax the hardworking market woman out
to sell her produce and divert the money into their pockets. They will not
maintain the markets, roads, street lights or pick up the garbage because
that actually requires honesty, dedication and integrity. They will spread
some of the stolen money to buy political influence and protection.
Finally Mr Jeng, the role you envisage for our municipalities is what we
all hope for and indeed the way it should be. As you rightly pointed out, all
of the justified demands on a functional municipality rests on the people's
ability to hold municipal leaders accountable. That can only be done in a
solid democratic environment in which you and I as citizens and homeowners of
KMC will not contend with an unelected and ultimately unaccountable local
gov't headed by Lai Konteh. We must also remember Lai and the rest of his
cohorts illegally foisted on the Gambian people emanate and take their cue
from a national government that is entirely based on similar tendencies of
lawlessness and corruption. The municipal set up sees itself as an extension
of the national government and their obdurate nature is a direct reflection
of the overall failure of our national government. Reforms will not
materialize in a vacuum and unless Yahya Jammeh expends the political
capital required to usher in a full and functional democracy by cutting loose
criminals, sycophants and incompetent people , we will not be able to forge
forward. You are correct Yahya can't ensure that garbage is collected at Kerr
Serign, but if he persistently stifles the constitutionally guaranteed rights
of the people of Kerr Serign to take control of their municipality, he is in
effect ensuring that they endure fetid mounds of garbage. He will not do it
because his whole regime is built on incestuous political relationships that
cannot coexist with the open and direct form of participatory democracy
required to make both local and national government responsive to the basic
needs of the citizenry.
Karamba
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