D 136 million of this amount went for travel expenses of Yaya Jammeh, salaries for his flight crew, their insurance cover for flying Jammeh, Zainab Jammeh and their two kids. The amount also includes costs of air tickets for the presidential entourage that following him around the world, including "protocol girls" who act more like Jammeh's comfort girls.
The D 500,000,000 is a supplementary budget allocation in addition to that the 2014 allocation approved last December - an amount so colossal that it has started to be openly questioned in certain circles of the civil service. When we reached a senior civil servant about the numbers, he reacted vehemently against the unbalanced and callous approach to budget appropriation process which he described as "opaque, designed to conceal the gross mismanagement of taxpayers money while enriching themselves in the process."
The Ministries of Energy and Petroleum, both under the Office of the President received a combined D 30 million extra allocation for what is unclear, while the Ministry of Agriculture received no additional resources despite all the loud talk about Vision 2016 that has promised to usher in rice self-sufficiency in a couple of years.
D 63 million and D 65 million went to the National Assembly and the Judiciary, whereas the Ministry of Justice received an additional. These are institutions that Jammeh uses so effectively in suppressing the rights and liberties of Gambians, therefore he will ensure that resources are not a hindrance to enforcing the dictatorial powers of he regime. In case you were wondering what additional resources the Ministry of Education received in the appropriation exercise - zero, zilch, nada.
Please find below the breakdown of the supplementary appropriations in numbers, courtesy of FOROYAA:
National Assembly 63, 126,718
Judiciary 64,896,994
Independent Electoral Commission 9,218,640
Public Service Commission 4,994,079
National Audit office 21,353,843
Ministry of Tourism and Culture 18,501,822
Ministry of Justice 46,308.958
Pensions and Gratuities 98,342,649
Ombudsman 18,311,180
Miscellaneous 50,420,000
Ministry of Lands & Reg. Government 45,879,340
Ministry of Trade.Regional integration and Employment 67,981,727
Ministry of Youth & Sports 36,259,340
Ministry of Environment Parks and Wildlife 31,065,629
Ministry of information, Communication infrastructure 20,211,598
Ministry of Fisheries and Water Resource 37,254,997
Ministry of Energy 19,759,460
Ministry of Petroleum 11,648,410
