In part 1 published last year (2006), I highlighted how corruption has left our shores, planted itself in our high seas, grew roots then came back to invade us. Never in the history of our land have we seen such ingenious ways devised to line pockets of impoverish military personnel. There are many areas where corruption exists within the military but I will only highlight the most gross one. Our military is engaged in big time corruption aside from selling our diesel fuel in our high seas, it is also engaged in inflationary food purchases and payroll ghosting/impregnation.
I have colleagues who are of lower ranks, sergeants for example who work, worked and are working in our payroll offices. They don't received as much pay as Cadets and other officers do but yet still they have been able to put up houses and own cars. Some of them I know have more than one solid building. One in which they reside and another being rented out. Others are undeveloped. The simple question one may ask here is where is the extra income coming from? Is it from Jammeh allah's Bank? The answer of course is a no since Jammeh is the only one who knows about his omnipresent bank.
Here are the scenarios. These payroll officers collude with our some civilians in the treasury department. They raise ficticious vouchers, for example in a day, they can raise night travel allowance vouchers for say 80 soldiers claiming that these have been sent up country on a special operation/mission for a day or two. Their overnight stay allowances are then prepared and shared among the chain work of those responsible. The clerks who do the bulk of the paper work end up with the chicken change. The seniors who just append signatures affirming the existence of ghost overnight stays take the bulk. A colleague told me, "sometimes I am pissed off but what can I do". When the cheque has been prepared, and cashed out, it is brought to the head at the military headquarters. Names of existing soldiers and non existent soldiers are used. A false signature is appended by each name and the money is shared. Some of us are working our asses in the barracks without knowing that our names are being used to receive fat travel allowances.
Another method being used is this: the payroll is often not updated when soldiers are dismissed,leave the country or die. Their names continue to be kept in the payroll sheets and the corrupt team assign themselves the salaries of those soldiers. A colleague of mine who left for the west had his salary running for over a year. And guess what, a colleague who works at the payroll office had the guts to call him and tell him we are still feeding on your salary. Corruption is meticulously carried out by chain work and it will take real hardwork to combat this. Unless and until our civil servants obtain decent salaries, there is no way one can combat this since it involves a chain work. Some of colleagues who work at this payroll office know exactly what am talking about. Names of dismissed recruits are also maintained in the payroll. This is why we cannot tell the real number of soldiers we have in the Gambia because our payroll is impregnated with ghost names.
With all due respect to our befallen commrade, Lt. M. Jarjue, I am sure his salary is being run to say the end of the year. A colleague who works there remarked that if they don't finish the budget allocated for the year, the treasury office will cut down on our budget next year. So we are making sure that the funds are depleted before the end of the finanical year. If you deny this, talk to any soldier who has been in the service for sometime. Otherwise how can some of them our friends who have never gone on any peace keeping mission afford to build houses and buy cars? We know ourselves and we know what I am talking about.
This is how some military men are draining our resources. I fervently believe that this method also exist in the other branches of government and there is little one can do to stop this. Our auditors only look at raised vouchers, whether they were approved and if they were actually spent. By spent I mean they verify/confirm that there is a receipt or someone has sign out to receive those funds. How can they detect the false signatures?And they dare not quizz the top brass. May God help our nation.
By Town Crier.