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Omar Ndow opens testimonyMonday, January 14, 2008
The former managing director of Gamtel, yesterday, gave evidence in his economic crime trial, after he was discharged and acquitted on the second count of abuse of office.
Testifying on count I, in which he is charged with disobedience of statutory authority, before a crowded court presided over by Principal Magistrate BY Camara of the Banjul Magistrates Court, Omar Ndow said he worked with the Department of Telecommunication in 1971 as a trainee technician. He recalled that he was promoted in 1975 to the rank of senior officer and later appointed senior engineer at Gamtel in 1984, when Gamtel was established as a public enterprise. He said he became the managing director of Gamtel from 1994 to 1996 and later bounced back to the same position in 2003 to November 19, 2006, when his services were terminated. Mr Ndow told the court that the prosecution witnesses spoke of two different things, elaborating that Abdoulie Bah, the first witness, touched on payment due to be approved by himself (Omar Ndow as MD) in connection with the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) pilot project, which he described as a wireless communication system and the other witness touched on the Intelligent Network Platform otherwise called IN. He said the CDMA pilot project was approved by the Gambia Public Procurement Authority (GPPA) in consultation with its director general upon approval by the board of Gamtel. He described the pilot project as a trial project which is implementable at no cost, under the purview of a Chinese company called ‘Who Are We’. Omar Ndow revealed that there was a contract with a company called Alcatel for the expansion of fixed network lines, a project involving 230,000 lines, noting that this was signed and approved by The Gambia government in 2001. The contract, he went on, required contractors to provide pre-financing of 230,000 x €400 per line which amounted to €92 million but the contractor was unable to provide the pre-financing requirement which led to an agreement in 2003. “The project was at no cost to Gamtel at the initial stage,” he recounted. Mr Ndow disclosed that GPPA was consulted because it’s the procurement authority in The Gambia. “I personally had a telephone conversation with the director general of GPPA and one Pa Modou Gassama at the Department of Planning in the presence of Mustapha Conteh, a senior procurement officer at Gamtel. The DG of GPPA gave his approval,” he narrated. According to Mr Ndow, many letters were exchanged between GPPA and Gamtel through the Department of State for Communication and Information Technology (DoCIT). Mr Ndow identified copies of the said documents together with dates on the way book of DoSCIT, indicating the dates the said documents were delivered to the department. The documents were then tendered and marked as exhibits. Principal Magistrate BY Camara then adjourned the case to January 17 for continuation. Author: by Sanna Jawara
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