Sunday, July 31, 2016

Zainab Jammeh is on a month-long family holiday at taxpayer's expense

Zainab Jammeh left Banjul International Airport this evening for what is billed as a family holiday to France.  In addition to her son and daughter, she will be accompanied by an entourage that include her sisters, brothers, sisters- and brothers-in-law who flew in from Guinea and Morocco to join the fun at Gambian tax payer expense.

The cost of the 20-person special flight and the holiday is estimated to cost the Gambian taxpayer over $ 2 million at a time when the foreign reserves at the Central Bank of the Gambia is less than two months of imports.

Few days ago, the trip was described as a medical trip for her daughter which appeared to have been concocted to make it less objectionable to the poor citizens of one of the poorest country on earth.

Given Gambia's economic condition and the fact that its citizenry is among the highest taxed, an expensive trip of this nature is as insensitive and it is a financially irresponsible proposition of s country that is under an International Monetary Fund's sanctioned staff monitored program.

This trip is coming at the heels of a newly informal business sector tax increases that will affect market women who sell garden vegetables to mechanics who fix flat tires to butchers who sell retail meat.  These basic commodities have now been priced out of the reach of ordinary Gambians.

Unemployment among Gambians in general and the young is particular has gone through the roof that has compelled Gambian youth to vote with their feet as expression of their dissatisfaction with a regime that has increasingly gotten out of touch with the mood of the country.

Mr. and Mrs. Jammeh are completely oblivious of and insensitive to the plight of a country whose economy has been completely destroyed by a regime that is progressively sliding into the abyss of decadence in the midst of abject poverty.