Factcheck: Barrow’s misleading comments - Bantaba in Cyberspace
Claim: President Adama Barrow says the Securiport deal is not problematic as it has to be in place and added that the only issue with it is the process which makes the deal flawed such as collecting physical cash from passengers at the airport.
Archive note: the original publication date could not be verified. March 14, 2021 is an assigned catalogue date for this record.
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Claim: President Adama Barrow says the Securiport deal is not problematic as it has to be in place and added that the only issue with it is the process which makes the deal flawed such as collecting physical cash from passengers at the airport.
The Gambian president Adama Barrow took a trip to the United States to attend the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly meeting. He used the occasion to address some Gambians in New York on recent happenings in the country. In the said meeting, he also discussed the issue of Securiport, a U.S company that is controversially operating at the Banjul International Airport since 2017 collecting $20 from arriving and departing passengers.
His comments came on the heels of a Malagen investigation that exposed how the government flouted procurement, tax, and public finance rules in signing and implementing the contract with Securiport, resulting in a loss of at least D274m of government money to the state.
In his first public statement on the issue, Barrow was quoted by a Sept. 26 Jamaano online article as saying:
“Regarding the security fee that’s being paid at the airport, when your airport is being assessed, the airport is rated according to its security. So, it has to be there. How it is collected is what is flawed.
“We wanted it to be included in the ticket but for it to be in the ticket is not the prerogative of The Gambia. The ticketing system is international, so to include it there is difficult.
“But we are trying to get it included because it is $20. And I know everyone in this country goes to The Gambia once every year I believe.
“I believe it is reasonable that one gives D1,000 or D2,000 to The Gambia. We want people to pay because everyone wants development.”
In factchecking the above statements made by the president, Malagen media monitoring looks at several key problematic issues, including:
Not everyone pays: The contract signed between the gov’t and Securiport provides exemption for 2-year-olds and below. However, diplomatic passport holders have not been paying the levy. While Barrow said ‘we want people to pay because everyone wants development,’ he himself may not be paying the levy after all.
The contract was made illegally: The auditors have faulted various aspects of the airport security levy. The cash collection, which Barrow admitted as flawed, is just one minor issue as per the audit queries. The legitimacy of the contract was questioned in view of the following:
At the outset, the contract was single-sourced in violation of procurement rules.
The tax exemption given to the company did not go through National Assembly approval.
The attorney general, the chief legal adviser to the president, advised against signing the contract
The payment of $4.5m being claimed by Securiport from the gov’t for the delayed start was queried as a violation of public finance rules.
The comments made by President Adama Barrow are misleading.
"Simple is good" & I strongly dislike politics. You cannot defend the indefensible.
Reacting to the findings, Securiport said the deposit slips are available and will be transmitted to auditors.
“Deposits in the wrong accounts are simply human mistakes,” the company added.
However, according to auditors, the management response “did not address the audit finding therefore the issue remains outstanding”.
The National Audit Office has advised the Gambia government to recover D164, 053,036.00 paid to Securiport towards the arrears of revenue claimed to have been accrued from 1 October 2019 to 31 August 2020 when the project could not commence due to nonenforcement of agreed security fee collection by government.
The NAO report on the award of contract to Securiport for the administrative and management of immigration security services at the Banjul International Airport highlighted that discussions between auditors and government officials revealed that the delay was caused by engagements with the international aviation body, IATA, to request a code to be embedded in air tickets which was however denied due to The Gambia being considered as an expensive destination.
The auditors' report says, Securiport relied on one of the provisions of the contract which requires the government to make payment to the company for any failure in enforcing the collection of the airport security fee.