Alhaji Mamadi Kurang, former parliamentary contender, has ripped into the Barrow administration’s 30% salary increment for public workers, labelling it as “unstructured”.

Last week, lawmakers approved the government’s revised budget aimed at increasing civil servants’ salaries by 30%.

The increment came amid a high cost of living crisis and rising food prices. 

However, Mr Kurang said the salary increase did not go far enough to help poorly paid Gambian workers. 

“You cannot only say salaries have been increased but what you should ask yourself is how long has salary been increased because many of the government workers are low-salary earners.

“If you want to help the country, you should take up a salary structure that will favour the low-earners. In fact, there are some sections of the society where you don’t need to increase their salaries because you take the taxpayers money to increase government workers salaries,” he said. 

Kurang added that “there are some Gambians who are suffering more than government workers, they are suffering than the policemen, they are suffering more than the nurses and they are the farmers who only earn once a year after selling their harvests.

“So, if you are increasing salaries, you don’t only say I am increasing salaries because I am fulfilling my political promise but you should look at your action and rate it on its effects on the economy.” 

Reporting by Adama Makasuba