The highly controversial revolving loan scheme bill that was approved by the members of the Gambian National Assembly and ruled as unlawful by the Supreme Court of The Gambia will be removed from the 2021 Budget.
According to a memo from the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance to the Accountant General, budget line 020101-211280(Revolving Loan Scheme) under the National Assembly Recurrent Budget 2021 must now be taken out of the budget, effectively killing the D54.4 million loan that MPs voted to allow themselves to receive millions of Dalasis from taxpayers cash as loans to develop plots of land they were given by the government.
It could be recalled that two Civil Society organisations filed an injunction at the Supreme Court to block the disbursement of the said loan to the lawmakers by which was defeated in February this year.
However, in a landmark ruling in May, the Supreme Court declared the MPs action of allocating themselves millions of Gambian taxpayers cash as revolving loan “unlawful” and called for the strike out of the D54.4 million from the 2021 budget.
Gambians were outraged when the lawmakers approved the said amount as loans to build plots of land they acquired from the state free of charge when average Gambian live in abject poverty up and down the country.
