By Lamin Njie
Sidia Jatta has told the finance minister money government used to buy foodstuff it plans to dole out to Gambians should have been approved by the national assembly.
The Gambia government last month spent over 700 million dalasis on rice, sugar and oil as part of a massive food aid program. The staggering sum was generated through virement and the central government never took it to the national assembly for approval.
Wulli West national assembly member Sidia Jatta insisted on Thursday virement is a fraud.
He told Mambury Njie in his face at the national assembly: “The issue is how legal is it what you have done. And I am saying, ‘no, technically it is not legal’.
“When we were making law to allocate expenditure, that was done by the authority of parliament and it was law. When we decided that, ‘this amount – 70 million is for travel [budget] for this particular ministry or particular department’, that was the law that we made.
“So technically, that law can only be changed by us, not by you because you’re not a lawmaking institution. The decision to allocate to a particular sector is law, that’s why you brought an appropriation bill and that was made into a law and that law authorises the spending department to do this and do that.
“So if you want to change from what it is, or you want to withdraw that amount allocated that particular sector, you don’t have that authority. You have to come back to the lawmaking institution.
“Virement for me is a fraud. It does not go with any law.”
