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Mr Ba is giving evidence before the Local Government Commission of Inquiry (LGCI) on key council matters as the inquiry into local government affairs continues. He is the councillor for the Giboro ward; he was first elected in May 2018 and re-elected in May 2022.
He has served as Chairman of the Development Committee, Secretary of the Establishment and Appointments Committee, Member of the Market Committee and Member of the Social Committee.
He testified that the development committee used to meet at least once a month, and sometimes twice a month. He was given a file containing the minutes of the development committee meetings. There were no meetings in 2019, and only one minute for 2020, 2021, and 2022. None for 2023. He was unable to provide any coherent answers. Instead, he relayed information received from his secretary, Bubacar N. Kanteh of Kartong District, about the missing files.
Bach said the documents were placed somewhere in the vice-chairman’s office but have since disappeared. He added that there are copies of the minutes. He has been asked to provide copies on or before Wednesday (this week). Despite this, he said the social committee was very deserted.
The chairman of the Development Committee was asked about the constituency grant he received from the Brikama District Council. He testified that he had received it only once, in 2019, for Dh500,000. He was asked to explain where the money went.
Elaborating on the advent of these ward allotments, he said the idea came from the Development Committee that all wards should get allotments for their own development plans.
He added they were told existing funding would not provide for all 28 wards, hence the idea of applying and setting criteria. The criteria were set by the council’s planning and development department, which included wards having accounts, proposed plans and evidence of minutes.
He maintained that in the first allocation, only five constituencies submitted documents and all met the requirements. He believed that all constituencies had equal opportunities but only five constituencies applied. According to him, in the second allocation, the number of constituencies that applied was more than five and a review was done to determine which constituencies met the requirements. However, the Development Committee decided to allocate the five constituencies: two from Kombo, two from Foni and one from the ethnic minority in Jabang, representing the Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC).
The BAC officer testified that he was part of the selection team and his ward was allotted and claimed that they met all the requirements.
The committee noted that there was no information about the process in the Development Committee files, but Bah still claimed to have the records. He was instructed to bring the records to the committee on Wednesday (this week). Contrary to his claims, one of the councillors had previously testified that nine constituencies were allocated, not 10.
Mr Ousman Ba was informed that there were claims that there was bias in the allocation process but he refuted the claims and said all constituencies had equal opportunities and only eligible constituencies would get the funds.
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