The following is culled from FRROYAA BURNING NO: 88/2002 30 December 2002-
1 January, 2003
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At The National Assembly
Halifa Sallah Speaks At The Adjournment Debate
Development has parameters and scope . Each administration set the limits
and possibilities for developing the country. It should be very clear what
our role is in this National Assembly. It is to facilitate development. It
is left to those who manage the affairs of this country to decide or to
ignore what is being said. But essentially, the type country that that we
envisage is one where whoever governs his country will try to move it
forward. So those who wish to take their place will always try to prove
that they can do better. That is precisely what we are out to do. It is
unfortunate that some people will stand in this National Assembly and
praise the present administration for the present state of our economy.
Anybody who is able to do that at this moment would be right to say that we
are not on the same side, because as far as I am concern this country is in
a crisis situation. I don't know other people's definition of crisis but I
must say a situation where you have a farming community living in
abject poverty, 69% of a population living in abject poverty is a crisis
situation and some people even close their eyes to this. I was being
questioned, "Well could we say that there is that poverty in the country?"
Then I asked the person how much we pay our top civil servants. He said
D2000, D3000 a month.
How much is a kilo of meat D50 by 30 days, that is D1500. For somebody
earning D2000, what is that person left with? A bag of rice D275 what about
a person earning D700, D500, D400, how is that person living with a family?
So we must accept that people are suffering, if we sincerely want to
represent them. We must accept the reality of our people, that they are
finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet. And this is not
propaganda, it is the reality. If we are sensitive to the problems of the
people then we will begin to utilise our capacity to think to come up with
policies to be able to addressed them.
I want to emphasised that so far the government has not proven that it can
build up the productive base of the economy. The productive base can be
building a private sector or a public sector. We have been told
unquestionably that the public corporations we have are not even paying
dividends to the government.
They are not viable, yet we have to acknowledge that and see what is wrong
and how to make them viable. If we are moving forward, we are moving
backward. We have been shown very clearly by facts that we have
institutions of accumulation, that is, the banking system. In order for
that banking system to help us to build the productive sector it must
invest, it must give loans. We are being told that the private sector is
not receiving those loans from the banking system. Therefore we do not have
a viable private sector. Consequently, the government is finding it
difficult to earn the revenue that it need to be able to provide us with
the services that we needs. This is the reality and we are been told
clearly that the government has been relying on treasury bills in
order to be able provide the revenue; that we need. It is becoming more and
more indebted internally to the tune of D2.9 billion. We are been told very
clearly that in order to provide us with services government is taking
loan after loan.
That is how it is managing to provide us with services. That is the
reality. I mentioned it here that we must try to build the productive base
of the economy.
Its not enough just to tell us that we have received this loan and we have
received it for agriculture; that is not enough. We must look at the
result. If you invest you should not have a depreciating result. You
should have something generating for you to earn more. That is what is not
happening. And if you look at the situation, I mentioned the debt of the
country $601 million, converted it can be more that D13 billion. Someone
said here that it should not be reported as such that in reality this is
not the whole debt taken by this government but in his 2001 budget; that
some persons recorded here annex 4, that 1994 the external debt of the
country was D3.464 billion (three billion four hundred and sixty four
million dalasis) internal debt at the tune of D717.8 million. This
has increased external debt to D8337.9 million, internal debt D2024
million.
This year, we have been told that it has increased to $601 million converted
over D13,700,000 (Thirteen billion, seven hundred thousand million dalsiss)
with internal debt D2.9 billion. That is a reality, we cannot fabricate
anything, and everything is on record. And I am told that the debt is
sustainable when Gambia is part of the highly indebted poor countries
because we cannot sustain our debt, we cannot pay it, we are asking for
debt relief and there are conditionalities. We cannot even taken certain
debts because those debts are sustainable. Everything that I have said is
standing on two feet not one foot because I am not saying these things to
give a bad record to anyone. We are stating the facts as they are and we
should come from those facts to shape the destiny of the country.
Essentially, we talk about solutions, a member there called us "left" and
said that "what you want here cannot happen". What do we want? It was not
our intention to dwell on that, but what we want is very clear.
Somebody has said that in Kanilai a big farm has been created, we should
follow the example. We said the vast majority of the Gambian people do not
have the money to establish such a farm. That's not the way forward, what
is the way forward? Hundreds of women, hundreds of men are going to that
farm to work and they said people don't want to work. Why are they going to
that farm to work?
Who is working there? It is the Gambian people who are working there. We are
saying, create a farm of that nature, give it to those men and women as
cooperative, give them those facilities, we tell you that they will work ten
thousand times harder to enrich this country and enrich themselves. That is
our system, that is what we are calling for, that is our solution. Provide
the people with those cooperatives provide them with facilities, they will
work as hard as anybody could imagine to increase productivity and increase
their living standard. What they produced, their wealth will go back to
them to help them live better lives. That is our system. And the member who
said that people don't want that system, I challenge him to invite us in
his own constituency and we face the people together, he tell them the
system he favours and we tell them the system we favour we see who the
people are going to listen to, we see who they will clap for. The essence
here is, we have the capacity to build the productive base of the economy.
Those who are in the private sector should be encouraged to do the most
they can but we have seen their limitations. This must be another
intervention; an intervention from the angle of the public sector is
absolutely essential because this is what the people own. And this is the
reality that we are calling for. We must look at the resources of this
public sector. The AMRC, the wealth they have generated, how are we going
to invest this to build up a growing productive base. A private sector
accepting it's responsibilities, a public sector accepting the
responsibilities, informal sector, we cooperated all over the place, will
make the Gambia to begin to develop. And in many instances I have heard it
been said that the people don't want to work, that everything is owned by
foreigners, foreigners are the traders but if you look at the Gambia, you
look at VTC, you look at GTTI, you imagine the number of Gambians who are
being trained over the year. You imagine the old PWD, you look at SOGEA,
all the works that had happened here from WIMPEY up to now it was Gambians
working to build that, look at the beautiful structures in this country. So
essentially, you have competent Gambians who can carry out that work. But
you go to certain facilities, I hope our project monitoring committee
will start to go and visit some of these projects, you see whether it is
Gambians who do not want to work. The number complaints that I receive from
Gambians in certain institutions on discrimination that they are subjected
to.
They had mentioned this to people of authority that they have the
competence.
Sometimes even the salaries they are paid will be different, yet they are
said to be people who do not want to work. They have the capacity to work
but many of them are sitting down because of lack work. If you look at the
country, if you are technician go to the radio repairer, you discover that
you do not have spare parts. You canibalise this one to fix to the other
one that's why you have mountains of radios, mountains of all sorts of
equipment because the spare parts are not there. So, we have to acknowledge
the difficulty of the country and not to completely blame the people for
the problem that we are having they have elected us to represent them to
serve their interest. And I must conclude on that particular subject by
saying that it is critical situation. We have seen in the budget speech
that 195,000 children are in our primary schools, 68,000 in Upper Basic
Schools, 10 years from now, 20 years from now these people are going
to be in the street looking for work. If we don't build up this country,
what do we expect this country to be? This is what we must confront; this
is the reality of this country. It is very essential for the government to
blame the people for lack of development. We need an open society, open
society where we can discuss.
This is what helps people to nourish their mind. You can see as I have
mentioned here that we had a budget session, it would have been good to
have the television, to have the radio facilities to invite all sectors of
society to debate these issues. This is how you generate ideas and develop
policy section at a given stage Citizen FM used to take proceedings of the
National Assembly and broadcast it immediately. What has happened to that
Radio station? And we talk about foreigners, foreigners, we have our own
Gambians developing their techniques, investing their resources, you
suppressed them, other people who come from outside invest and then you
stand and say Gambians are lazy, they don't want to work, foreigners are
taking our country. What opportunities have been given to those Gambians
without being anti-foreigner?
Speaker: Your time is up.
Halifa: Thank you, since my time is up, thank you very much.
Halifa Sallah's Reaction To The Budget Speech
After the Secretary of State for Finance and Economic Affairs, Mr. Famara
Jatta delivered his budget speech members of the National Assembly debated.
If we started with Halifa's reaction.
Halifa focused on work, savings and investment being the basis of
sustainable development. He pointed out that government is relying on
domestic debt to meet it's budgetary outlays. Domestic debt, he said, has
grown to 2,900 million dalasis and 200 million dalasis is budgeted to
service this debt. Subventing budget deficits with debt, he emphasized is
unsustainable. The external debt is also unsustainable.
He went further to say that the Gambian economy is parasitic because it is
dependent on the re-export trade, i.e it is not producing but selling. Let
us pick up from where we stopped:
The problem we are having is that we are relying on a private sector to be
the engine of growth and that private sector has no base at the moment to be
productive. And that is why I am emphasizing that something has to be done.
That nothing has been done is very clean from the beginning.
The AMRC, we are told that they have collected D154 million cash and assets.
From who? Some Gambians. Some of these assets have been sold. What benefit
did it have to the state and the economy? I would have liked to read that
in the budget speech. After these assets have been disposed of what is the
contribution to expand the base of our economy. And it was left nothing but
just to dispose of properties. The government claims that the private
sector is the engine of growth. Then why not negotiate with those people
and help them to become the capitalists so that they own capital and
continue, and ensure that they are properly regulated and supervised under
those circumstances.
So that you have a Gambian ownership. I am simply examining a government.
Why not create that investment bank with those resources. There are many
Gambians Permanent Secretaries (retired), customs, etc. Some of them are
collecting Pensions and if you see them you will sympathise with them. Big
brains. Why not organise those people?
You are talking about the region. You are talking about possibilities,
whether between ACP/EU or the recent development in ECOWAS. There are
possibilities of getting funds to invest. What has been done to put those
people together and look for this way of getting support? I'm just simply
saying if you are serious about a policy then it is essential to see that
you are to examine it and see how you are to put it in place. But that is
one way, Honourable Speaker of helping that private sector that is what is
considered to be the engine of growth.
It is important to bear in mind that concept of entrepreneurship which was
also rooted in the ERP. We were told that the public service was
overcrowded, that there were excess baggage there and it had to be off
loaded and IBAS was to have resources and any of those ex-civil servants
who wanted to go into business would be assisted by IBAS to set up
businesses. That was the new generation of entrepreneur since 1985. What
happened to them? Have they survived to be able to build up a base in the
economy?
After been given loans by IBAS some established butcheries, etc, what
happened to all that? But the sing-song is that we are preparing young
people to become entrepreneur. Again, I am emphasising the need for study,
to examine what happened to yester years would be entrepreneurs. What
environment did they work in? Did they survive? If they did not what was
the problem?
Look at the problem of the public service, it is not lack competence. The
basic problem, Honourable Speaker, is impoverishment. Look at the salary
scales! We are not saying people should be greedy. However, if we are
motivating people from another angle, let us see that they are patriotic,
that they love their country, they should serve their country. But would it
be remuneration? We are examining the salaries. Consider somebody receiving
D750, if that person buys a bag of rice for D275, the lowest price, pays
for transport, what would be left?
The socalled "fish money" would be nullified."
We are talking about immense poverty. You talk about the inefficiency of the
civil service; you go to the office and discover that civil servants have
gone out to look for the next day's meal. After doing a little of bit job,
they look for what to get elsewhere. That is the reality. Are we really to
acknowledge it?
Let us accept the reality.
Public servants are poorly remunerated. What we mean by they are poorly
remunerated is that if you look at the basket of consumption, the vast
majority cannot sustain the family from what they are earning.
In that sense we must begin to look at the whole structure of our economy
and we can see what the problem is at the moment. I have said that what the
government has done is to develop objectives and it is good we examine the
various sectors where government has invested.
On Health
Honourable Speaker, in the area of health, I would like to emphasise again
that taking the wholistic approach of looking at a whole sector. We can
maximize on what we are gaining from loans to be able to build up the
health sector.
Strategically, we are looking at three components of the health sector, the
primary, the secondary and the tertiary.
In the villages, you have the primary health posts, the health centres, the
dispensaries being the secondary and the major hospitals being the tertiary.
Strategically, in planning for the future, it would be important that we
have major hospitals in all the administrative areas. The health post will
link to that and the village health posts also.
What has happened to the Bamako Initiative? I have not heard it mentioned
in the speech. What has happened to the arrangement in getting the people
to sell and buy drugs? It would be important to know what had actually
happened. Are the people capable of buying those drugs? Are they actually
buying them? Is that system actually working?
I would have liked to see that in the budget speech. We are talking about
priorities being set, programmes being established, we then use the
programmes to gauge whether we are achieving our aims and objectives. That
becomes very important.
I must stress the preventive dimension. We must build the capacity of those
people involved at the village level so that they can intensify education on
preventive health because of the expensive nature of drugs. Preventive
health must be a major drive of educating people.
It is important to link health and the environment. At a workshop organized
by the National Environment Agency the rubbish dump opposite the SoS
village at Bakoteh was analysed. They went into the local community to look
at the wells and analysed the wells. So, it is important that we begin to
help our people to have greater understanding of health issues and
emphasise the preventive dimension.
I've given examples, Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital is a big hospital, the
major hospital of the country. But a pregnant woman was taken there and she
had to have an operation. Her blood group was O but there was not a single
drop of group of blood in that hospital. This is why I am saying we must
make the people conscious on health issues, our common bond, and the
necessity to sacrifice and build up our health system.
On Education
We have been told about the enrolment ratio, page 19. The Honourable
Secretary of State has indicated in paragraph 105/106 that "the combined
efforts has resulted in a number of achievements in the current year
2001/2002. The number of lower basic schools has increased to 371 from 331
in the previous year, while the number of upper basic schools increased to
114 compared to 62 in 1999/2000 respectively. This is important. As we can
see access is being achieved. This is
why 195,373 are in lower basic schools. We can see that the transition rate
is 60,000 plus. This means that we really have to work very hard to ensure
that by the time the new intakes reach Grade 6 they will have a full
transition rate to upper basic schools. This is the challenge that we have
to face as a country.
It is important though to bear in mind that while access is being achieved
we have to look at the substance of a good education system. The facilities
are important. We must examine the facilities. A school building was burnt
and we had to look for charity to replace the roof. It is important to look
at those schools that have been left behind and give them priority to catch
up with the rest. It is necessary to focus on equity, to create equity
within the structure itself.
Secondly, it is a question of relevance which is a priority for education
the country. We mentioned the budget allocation which is over 12% of the
budget, the highest apart from debt service charges which constituted more
than 30% of the budget. But then an analyst showed that while 70 percent
went to salaries only 50 percent went to teaching and learning materials.
That is something we have to address. The solution to that must be national
to a certain degree. Many people are here who call themselves
intellectuals, people with knowledge. The objective of education is to help
others to learn. Such people need to come out to write for our school
system. I must say some have done that. There is currently a history book
which a person has printed and when it was taken to the school system we
discovered that we do not have a standard system where books are examined,
qualities checked and then approval given for them to be used in our
school system. There is no uniformity as far as learning materials are
concerned. We have to address that Honourable Speaker. It is important for
new structures to emerge. Whether it is going to be the conference of
principals in association with the education directorate or the board, we
should come up with a mechanism for calling on Gambians to write on any
subject and they will be responsible for examining these materials and
coming up with the quality instrument that can be put in our school system.
If we do that we will encourage a lot of Gambians particpiate in knowledge
production. We have always been consumers of knowledge, we need to become
producers of knowledge.. This is one way of getting many people, whether
retired or not, something to do.
Honourable Speaker, it has repeatedly been said that Gambians are not
teaching.
But if there is a college entrance exam, I promise you, you'll have three to
four times of people required and those people who would go to take the
examination are likely to even have that level of secondary education. One
must ask the question: Is it that Gambians do not want to teach or do we
lack adequate facilities to train teachers. The education system is pumping
out thousands of people, from the sixth form, fifth form, and others.
We cannot say our education system is that bad; that those people are
incompetent to be trained to become teachers.
We keep on repeating that Gambia youths don't want to work. All of them
cannot go to the offices. Let them go and get "Tabuli Mbaga" and sell they
will become rich. But, Honourable Speaker, we are crying that foreigners
are teaching our children and becoming anti-foreign and without those
teachers will not have any body to teach our children because we have not
train our children. We have to address that. Where does the problem lie? Is
it our system of training or the refusal of our people to work? That has to
be addressed.
To be continued
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Source: FOROYAA (Freedom) NO: 88/2002 30 December 2002- 1 January, 2003
ISSN: 0796- 08573
Address: FOROYAA, P.O.Box 2306, Serrekunda, The Gambia, West Africa
Telephone: (220) 393177 Fax: (220) 393177
Email address: [log in to unmask]
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