From the Point Newspaper: "Sallah revealed that in six weeks time good
refined Gambian oil will be available."
If this is fulfilled, it does not necessarily represent a positive
development. In order for Gambians to gauge its cost-effectiveness, the SOS
for Agriculture needs to reveal how much was spent from public funds towards
establishing the refinery project? Is it an entirely public enterprise? If
not, what is the private sector's involvement?
If the private sector is involved, what is the agreement on the ownership of
its assets and the share of liabilities and profit or loss?
The SOS also needs to spell out how viable the oil refinery will be in the
face of massive oil imports into the country? What measures will be adopted
to make it viable? Are costs towards its operation going to be subsidised?
and if so, to what monetary extent or timescale? or is it going to protected
through import volume and tax controls OR is it to both protected and
subsidised?
In the dispensation of public business, it is the public's right to know how
so-called development projects are executed through the disclosure of
financial and agreement reports. Fulfilment of the public trust is not
limited to getting things done but making it known to the taxpayers how such
objectives were realised.
If parliament is truly representing the interest of the public, they must
individually and collectively insist that this is done; the media also has
an important role to play in bringing this about but it is the ultimate
responsiblity of the citizenry to ensure that all public stewards are
accountable because the final say should be ours.

Finally, the Point should try to verify the accuracy of the following from
the Senegalese Government: "A caller told this paper that Senegal this year
produced 1.2m tons of groundnut but was only able to market 400, 000." I
don't beleive this to be true at all but if the Point is really interested
in getting to the point in this regard, they need to ascertain what happened
to the balance of 800, 000 tons of Senegalese groundnut that could not be
marketed either by Senegalese farmers or their government.

The yoke of oppression must be shattered!

BMK



>From: Jungle Sunrise <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: This year's groundnut trade.
>Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 09:28:07 +0000
>




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