Jungle,

Sorry for responding late. Your silence over some of the issues I raised seems
to confirm that you see my points. If Tariq Musa ordered dust-bins from out
side the country to be bought by government authorities whiles we have a
Sankung Sillah is not a serious approach to national development. If we can
order containers for collecting rubbish whiles we have small industries, who
are struggle to survive daily and could produce the same type or even
something better is also not a serious approach to national development. This
has been my point of take off. I am not saying that communication net work
should not be extended to the rural arrears, my problem is that we have other
urgent development issues than that. Remember the great majority of our
farmers are still using hoe and living in huts, drikking from well water and
the majority of them could not provide a decent three daily meals. If you are
to invest a $10million project on behave of these people then one must be very
conscious as to what is intended to achieve. The amount of people who will be
able to afford telephone in the rural areas is very limited, likewise a
television, the State might end up subsidising for these services.
Get me right here; I am not saying that we don't need well-constructed roads.
This we need as much as efficient electricity supply. The issue is, do we
actually need to spend so much in the construction of these roads? What I am
saying is that, we don't need a four lane highway inside Serre Kunda, no
matter what service these roads will perform, they will not pay off, the only
way out will be to increase road tax and this again will have to affect the
comsumers. We need roads but we need roads that we can afford, you don't take
big loans to build a road capacity that you don't need and when poverty is in
the increase.
The APRC regime declared the dead of the 1st republic without been able to
liberate her self from the shadows of the 1st republic. For example, You don't
just go on building hospitals because the 1.republic did not do so, it is much
more better to have a well thought health programme and with that you might
know if you even need a new hospital and where. Or else it will just be as it
is, hospitals without drugs or simple necessary equipment. Just take Serre
kunda as example, perhaps one of the dirties towns in this world, how many
people are going to suffer and died from maleria in that town this year, only
God knows. Every bloody day when you visit the outpatient at the royal
Victoria hospital, you are almost convince that there is an emergency
situation in the country because of the amount of people queuing there.
Take the building of  schools, they are very many now and you hardly visit a
compound in that country without meeting a half educated school drop out or
some one struggling to pay his/her school fees. You don't call this national
development, there is much to that. A poor country like Cuba used not more
than two years to bring illiteracy to one of the lowest in the world. When
Sankara took over Burkina Faso, the country was more than poor, but theses
people with the little resources they had, brought illiteracy to one of the
lowest in the history of the country. Jungle, the amount of loan and grant
accumulated in the name of the country since the APRC came to power is enough
to do 10 times more than what this government achieved.A  serious government
faced with this serious poverty will never buy a jet fighter, even if free
they will return it back, let  alone a president with a private plane, private
zoo, two homes etc. It is only self-sacrifice that will be able to bring us to
our dreams of a better Gambia. Go bring all the world industries in the
Gambia, if the objectives are not for freedom, there will always be poverty,
just look at Nigeria with all the wealth and industries of that country.

For Freedom
Saiks






















>===== Original Message From The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
<[log in to unmask]> =====
>Saiks,
>
>You have raised many varied and interesting points on which I shall do my
>best to shed some more light. First of all, let me tell you that I know
>poverty to my finger tips and that my knowledge of poverty is from a very
>close encounter. I did not read about it. I have lived in it. You see Saiks,
>I was born into what you can term a relaticely well-off family and grew up
>seeing what wealth and generousity can do. I also lived through a period of
>living a life of deprivation and seeing how some people repay kindness and
>generousity when you no longer have what yiu used to have.
>
>As a kid growing up in Kuntaur (CRD), I have witnessed how dozens of my
>relatives and friends of my family from the Baddibus, Bakau, Serekunda and
>Banjul would regularly visit or come for holidays. i have also witnessed how
>some would even spend the whole trade season with us. I saw how my late
>father cared for dozens of them out of relationship and kindness. I have
>also seen how, within a space of about eight years, he lost almost
>everything. First, it was a major burglary that left us almost penniless,
>then a fire that gutted our entire compound, closely followed by the
>devastating devastating drought of the 70s and the departure of the first
>Taiwanese mission from The Gambia, when we switched recognisation from
>Taiwan to China. Saiks, my Dad was a rice and groundnut farmer as well as a
>businessman. Seeing how some folks repaid the generousity of my late Dad (He
>died in 1979) gave me first-hand lessons on wealth, friendship, poverty and
>of dignity.
>
>Having said that, let me now turn to the $10 million rural development
>project that we beginning to implement in the northern half of the country.
>The project involses the laying of about 350 Kms of fibre-optic cable from
>Basse to Barra and completing the loop to Banjul using a digital microwave
>link. The main purpose of doing this is to first of all provide the
>necessary security for the South Bank fibre in case there is a major
>catastrophe with it. You know that fibre, not only carries rural traffic,
>but also national TV and radio broadcasts as well. Secondly, it allows us to
>develop telecommunications on the North bank to the same level as that on
>the south bank of The river Gambia.
>
>I had mentioned sometime back that, access to information particularly in
>rural areas, is one way of fighting poverty. If our poor rural folks, need
>only travel a few Kilometres and have access to a phone to speak to their
>loved ones far away in the Greater Banjul rather than travelling dozens of
>kilometres just to make that call, you are saving them both time and money.
>If a poor farmer in Karantaba can call Banjul from Karantaba to inform his
>child that he/she badly needs money rather than borrowing money and
>travelling all the way to Banjul, only to learn that his/her kid has been
>trasnferred to say Kiang or some other place, you would be saving him/her
>and his/her child anguish, time, money and effort.
>
>Thirdly, if we agree that education and health are important pre-requisites
>for development in this day and age, and that in both cases the exchange of
>information has a big role to play, then the need to bring that to our rural
>folks is an absolute neccessity. Before you ask me how it would be powered
>when there is no electricity in the rural areas, let me tell you that they
>are normally solar-powered. The rural electrification project, announced
>earlier, would also come in very handy later.
>
>Fourthly Saiks, we all know that most of the rural folks who leave behind
>their families and come to the GBA do so to find work. If you can provide
>electricity and access to communications in some of these rural areas, there
>exists a good chance that some light industries may be located there and
>provide much needed employment. The Kuntaur groundnut mill provided jobs for
>thousands of people in the area until the former inept government moved it
>to Kaur. The result? Kuntaur is now almost a ghost town. The tug boats and
>barges that used to employ people and transport goods very cheaply up and
>down the river all disappeared. In those days, nobody dreamt of leaving
>Kuntaur for Banjul, Bakau or Serekunda.
>
>Coming to the roads being constructed, I do not know of any that has not
>been very long overdue. At a time when we are embarking on the Banjul
>Gateway project which establishes a trade free zone within the airport with
>the possibility of having several industries there, then the need for the
>dual carriageway linking it to Serekunda makes a lot of sense to me. Linking
>the same airport with the other economic zones of the country such as Kerr
>Serigne, Bijilo, Tanje, Sanyang, Kartong, Gunjur etc, also makes a lot of
>sense to me.
>
>Finally saiks, you seem to think that some of the investments in
>infrastructure being undertaken are somehow not priority projects. If that
>is your view, you cannot be more wrong. When potential investors come to a
>country and find that most of the essential infrastructures such as good
>roads, reliable electricity, good communications facilities, peace and
>security, a reasonably developed human resource base and of course good
>governance exist, they more likely to consider investing in that country
>than when they are not available. You see Saiks, a friend of mine in the
>tourism industry told a few days ago, that two tourists came to The Gambia
>for the first time two years ago and were so smitten with the country that
>they came back again this year. The changes they saw impressed them so much
>that they decided to start up something here. During their stay, they
>established that potatoes consumed in Gambia, though imported from mainly
>Holland are actually grown in South Africa.
>
>After their return, they came back again after a few weeks but this time
>with some agronomists. You see, these two tourists happen to be major
>potatoe farmers. Anyway having established that our soil is indeed very good
>for potatoe farming, they sought and got allocated land for farming potatoes
>for local consumption and export to the sub-region.
>
>For a start, they would sink boreholes for irrigation and are likely to
>start in ernest early next year. They plan to employ a little over 1,000
>(Over one thousand) full-time farm workers in the first year and hope to
>employ as much as six thousand within five years. This would have
>significant impact on the lives of the tens of thousands of people who
>depend on those workers.
>
>As to whether mordernising the air has had much impact on tourist arrivals,
>I do not know. Two things I do know however, are that the constraint we have
>in tourist arrivals are mainly due to the limited number of available beds
>as well as the quality of our product, amongst others. Improve on these, a
>friend told me, and we can double the number arrivals within five years.
>
>another thing I do know is that the number of aircraft landings and
>take-offs have more than trebbled during the past five years. At the moment
>no less than three dozen flights a week take-off from Banjul International
>Airport for various destinations. The recent decision of Afrinat
>International Airlines to use The Gambia as its hub into West Africa and
>operating three weekly flights to Newyork from Banjul is a case in point. I
>am sure when they start plying this route the number of flights from the
>sub-region would drastically increase. This means more jobs for Gambians as
>well as more revenue for the GCAA. Like I keep saying, "There is a time in
>the life of every problem when it is big enough to see, yet small enough to
>solve (Mike Levitt)". we are surely getting there!!!!
>
>Have a good day, Gassa.
>
>
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