By Lamin Sanyang
Gambia’s exiled former President Yahya Jammeh has been accused of robbing the country’s poor pensioners with billions of dalasi from the Social Security and Housing Finance Corporation SSHFC.
According to impeccable reports from the Finance Ministry, the exiled APRC leader has embezzled the poor workers pension funds through rampant ‘Executive Directives’.
“The Jammeh APRC administration has dipped its long arm into the workers pension funds through rampant ‘Executive Directives’ to the management of SSHFC,” Amadou Sanneh, Minister of Finance said.
Minister Sanneh made these revelations on Monday February 20, at a press conference held at the Ministry of Finance in Banjul.
The report further revealed a total of over two billion dalasi withdrawn by executive directives to a multiple expenditures without repayment. It has reported cash withdrawals of one million dollars made from the SSHFC through Executive Directives of Yahya Jammeh for expenditures uncounted for and undocumented.
“All these expenditures were out of the ordinary worker’s accumulated pensions fund,” Minister Sanneh pointed out.
Finance Minister said out of the abovementioned figure the sum of D1. 71 billion remains nonperforming without any payment made to it.
These revelations are stunning. The average Gambian workers were struggling to make ends meet while the former president was busy exploiting their hard earned money. It is well known fact that the country’s salary scale is one of the poorest in the sub- region. Despite the high prices of commodities still salaries remained low.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance has reported that the former President Jammeh’s APRC administration has left a debt stock of D48.3 Billion. It promised to reveal more on the destruction of the economy by the former government in the coming days, weeks and months. The questions lingering in the minds of many are whether the new government would be able to clear this amount of debt within a three year transition.
