By Muhammad Bah Officials of the closed down Gambia National Lottery (GNL) on Tuesday, 26th May 2015 were before the Public Accounts and Public Enterprises Committee (PAC/PEC) of the National Assembly for the second to respond to the Audit queries from 1996 to 2013. Hon. Abdoulie Saine, the National Assembly Member of Banjul Central, told the former GNL officials that unless the Audit queries presented to the PAC/PEC on their performance are clarified the company will not start operations again. Mrs. Mam Dagain Tambedou, the Acting Managing Director of GNL at the time of the closure, told the PAC/PEC members that all the questions being asked by the Auditors have been raised with them during the Audit exercise. She said she had advised her staff to cooperate with the team otherwise they will be called upon to answer to questions. “I asked for everyone to come out clearly and give information out any information they have,” said Mrs. Tambedou. The acting GNL MD said there are many departments under GNL and that all of them have their documents intact and submitted for the Audit reports except the finance department whose documents are missing. She also said that she had told the staff that if they are not ready to make things clear then nothing will be clear. The chair of the PAC/PEC session, Hon. Sulayman Joof of Serrekunda West said he believes there is something fishy going on with regards to GNL situation. Hon. Ba Fai Saidhykhan, NAM for Jarra East, who has always been critical regarding GNL during the Audit queries, expressed his lack of confidence that the issues will be made clear. He, therefore, suggested that the committee should proceed and make their recommendation to how they will deal with GNL. He cited his queries over payments without supporting documents. Present were officials of GNL, the board members, the former and current chairs, former and last Accountants, legal advisers, the former and incumbent mayors of Banjul. The Committee could not exhaust the Audit queries against GNL and therefore decided to postpone the meeting to next Tuesday, 2nd June 2015 for continuation. ]]>
