(JollofNews) – President Adama Barrow of the Gambia has set up a panel to review the wrongful sacking of civil servants and other government officials by the previous regime of Yahya Jammeh.
The eight member panel which is headed by the secretary-general and head of the civil service will from Monday hear complains from former government employees who believe that they have been wrongfully sacked or dismissed from their jobs between September 1997 to December 2016 through executive directives of Mr Jammeh.
According to a communique from the Office of the President, the panel will sit three days a week and would hear recent cases first before moving to the old ones.
Mr Jammeh governed the Gambia from July 1994 to January 2017. During his tenure, thousands of civil servants were sacked from their jobs without any explanation.
Review of civil servants illegally dismissed sound all alright. However, it also comes across as attacking the SOFT TARGET compare to other of Jammeh’s atrocities equally requiring review and action! For example, disappearances, murder, rape, theft of cash, expropriation of assets, privatisation and looting of government institutions designed primarily as self enrichment schemes, money laundering, other financial crimes, tax evasions!
Granted these latter category are HARDER TARGETS, yet they cannot simply be swept under the carpet as they will not go away. In fact, as a category, they can be expected to be the most likely to come back to hunt. Further they may hunt at wrong time, when there is less political capital with which to tackle them, and in line with Murphy’s law that what can go wrong will go wrong, and will do so at the wrong time!
Scared, you are spot on! What time frame will this commission look at? The appointments of some of those civil servants may have been illegal in the first place because most have not followed the civil service code, General Order (GO). The time and resources needed for this commission should be invested into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Any commission into the dismissal of civil servants should also look at their appointments, otherwise it would be a farce.
Scared, about what? The commission to look into those dismissals has already begun in earnest Ask Secretary Genaral D. Fadera. He has already singlehandedly struck the pen to move and remove his buddies and the proposal in setting up that commision is a farce.
It’s business as usual, TENDERS ARE ANNOUNCED when the position is already filled!