A group of councillors of Banjul City Council has ripped into the city mayor, Rohey Malick Lowe, over budget sitting claim.

The group of councillors alleged that the mayor accused them of prolonging a sitting over the council’s yearlong budget in order to get themselves paid 3,000 dalasis per sitting, a claim they described as false and misleading.

Speaking to reporters at a news conference yesterday (December 15), Basiru Ndow, chairman of the council’s finance committee, said: “The mayor accused us that we are delaying the budget session to pay ourselves allowances and she said that we are paying ourselves 3,000 dalasis which is completely wrong. 

“Every sitting, each member is paid 1,500 dalasis as allowance. As a finance committee we were working on a budget of 1.68 million dalasis for the whole year.”

According to him, the delay of the budget approval was as a result of them trying to get past this year’s budget details in order to draw their plans. 

“There were some trips which she went and collected money from the council and those private trips were not meant for the council and she paid herself 200,000 dalasis and we have the proofs,” he added.

Abdou Aziz Gaye, also the chairman of the council’s waste committee, described mayor Lowe’s alleged interview as “misleading and unjust allegations.”

“This we do to inform the Banjulians and the general public of the truth and address the misleading and deceptive allegation made by the mayoress,” he said.

He said the mayor has been dishonouring most of their sittings, saying that: “today we are supposed to have a general council meeting but that was called off again because the mayor didn’t show up to chair that meeting.”

“Here I would like to also say this back to the mayor if what she was alleging that we are the ones delaying the budget and after we have done all these tremendous efforts we got on this budget without her showing up, and today was the day we supposed to pass the budget.”

Reporting by Adama Makasuba