Thursday, 10 September | Sainey Darboe
Esau Williams, a BBC journalist of Gambian origin has raised concern about corruption and mismanagement of Covid-19 pandemic by the government of The Gambia.
Speaking in an interview on “The View Point“ show on QTV, he charged:
“Credibility is the currency of government. If a government has a reputation of being corrupt, if a government has a reputation of hiding the truth from its citizens, if a government has a habit of lying and believing that people don’t deserve to know what is going on...I will give you an example, during my program, there was an adviser to the president called Mai Fatty. He was sacked unceremoniously and I asked the director of press affairs at the president’s office why was he sacked and she told me in no uncertain terms the president doesn’t have to tell anybody why he sacks people. So when you have that sort of culture...a lot of this is about values,the values we bring to the job”.
Esau Williams further added that there is need for heightened awareness on the part of government officials of their duty to the citizenry instead of occupying offices for self-enrichment.
Describing the expensive per diem system as unsustainable, he added the officials had resorted to plunder of Covid-19 funds because the pandemic had rendered the per diem route to corruption untenable as a result of travel restrictions.
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