8 YEARS AFTER, STILL HUNGER AND POVERTY
D.K Jawara returned back home after many years of exile to the excitement of
many APRC and commentators, some of them called it reconcilliation. What was
more frustrating was that national funds were used to make his home
comfortable whiles our farmers were waiting for their monies after many months
of hard work.D.K Jawara is no hero of the Gambian people. The role he played
during the struggle for independence did not demand any sacrifice from him, it
was either him or someone else, he was part of a history that no one could
have stoped, it was a history created by ordinary Gambian people. What
followed after was his betrayal of the Gambian masses, for 30 years our people
were subjected to a neo-colonial rule; our people and resources were put to
the disposal of both national and international criminals. Porverty, hunger,
unemployment, and political harassment were the order of the day. Whiles D.K.
Jawara will load a plane with servants and "errand-boys" to London either to
play golf or attend royal ceremonies. No, it does not mean that the APRC is
not aware of this history. We all know that they claimed to have sacrifice
"their lives" to save the Gambian people from these conditions, liberate them
from poverty and hunger. What happen is that they could no more make such
claims. The fact is, D.K Jawara is more innocent in the eyes of the APRC, just
after 8 years, because if president Jammeh could tell us that not even his
grant children will become poor just after 8 years as head of State of one of
the poorest countries in the world, what he will become in the next coming 8
years is a matter of imagination, and if Mobuto is degraded to a small boy
class no one will be surprise.
After 8 years in political power the APRC have failed on all fronts, their
promises to make our country an independent and a better place to live. That
our people will regain their pride and bit fare well to acute poverty and
decadence, have all become promises punctuated with excuses totally barren of
logical thinking. People are blamed for the increasing hunger and poverty,
listen;
"Three years before, I made a pledge that The Gambia will be self-sufficient
in food production, but this hasfailed since hardly (do) our youths get
involve in skilled work".
What about the promises of electrifying over 80% of our country for two or
more years back, a failure, is it because our youths will not become
electricians? It seems that our president have just forgotten that more than
50% of the population of our country are farmers, if there is scarcity of
labour and or resources in our country, it is neither farm land nor farm
labourers. By the start of this farming season we heard some farmers saying
that it does not pay any longer to be a cash crop farmer in the country, they
are struggling with enough problems to feed their families and pay the school
fees of their children. Is it then an accident that our homes are filled with
half educated youths and yet they keep drumming in our ears that they have
built many new schools. How many times have we been reading in this forum
about students who are having problems and needed help to continue their
schooling and we must not forget that these are students who have the access
and contacts to reach such a medium and the newspapers with their problems.
The situation in our Schools are sicking, no one said it better than in a
recent editorial of the Independent newspaper.
The fishing sector in our country is so dead a matter that, if no
interventions are taking we might soon end up in the lines of many former
great finishing nations. Today the fishing industry would have been enough to
create jobs for our young people. But the realities are that people have
problems not only to buy fish but also to see fish in their markets. If
Gambians could face such problems, then the much talk of hunger and
unemployment in our country is not that our youths will not become fishermen,
farmers or electricians, but there is this lack of vision that should have
been an opposite pole to "Vision 2020"
A recent report by the UNDP have revealed that poverty has increased and very
seriously in our country for the past couple of years, with the help of some
of these UN development institution more than 70 % of our schools are now said
to have access to save drinking water. The reality in our country is that, we
are now more depended on the goodwill of these institutions to deal with the
poverty situation in our counry. The government of the APRC is more concern
with other things. At present the prices of basic commodities are so high that
our people are bound to dive to a deeper level of poverty. Beggars are
everywhere, before they were poor blind and handicapped migrants, today they
are citizens and in good physical and mental condition. Rural urban migration
was even though taking place but in most cases this was very seasonal but the
situation today is very different. Under such condition, curruption and
nepotism have become a normal way of life, prostitution is no more reserved
for poor foreign girls, you find then in every corner of our big towns and
some of them from our very homes. The youths are either dreaming of going to
Europe or become victims to drug abuses and unbelievable criminal activities.
Against the background of this decadent conditions are the day dreaming of an
economic "Vision" that has never taken heed to the needs of our country and
people. This is the very reason for the serious indebtedness of our nation.
The many and expensive loans that have been secured in the name of our people
and nation have partly been spent in building hospitals, because it is said
that the 1st republic did not build any. Today the condition of these
hospitals is more than serious. We are depending on foreign doctors who are
not able to speak neither our local languages nor the official one. We have
argued over and over that the development priorities in our health sector do
not necessarily mean that we need all these buildings. A better and
well-coordinated primary health care will be more profitable, less expensive
and reduced the burden on our poor equipped hospitals. Take the sanitary
situation in some of our big cities. Our towns are so dirty that needed
rainfalls are of nightmare for our people. The sources of malaria will not be
stop by building more hospital, only god knows how many of our young and
beloved people are going to be victims of malaria this year and many are going
to die very young. How can you even build a hospital and have
"philanthropists" to donate as simple and vital instrument as blood pressure
instruments. Or depending on the goodwill of citizens to buy an incubator for
your main hospital. Or take the building of big roads that some of us are
referring to as great developments. The expensive loans that are taking to
build these big roads are only going to increase our poverty and not reduce
it, the size of the roads are not what are going to produce great values, in
certain street in Serre Kunda, the roads are so bad that local residents have
taken measures in their owns hands to make sure that they are not accessible
to vehicles. Even our airport is not spared, we are proudly told that 20 or
more factories are to be build there, that our airport will be upgraded, the
VIP section etc. The monies that are going to do that job are needed somewhere
else, much of it are going to be paid back. The capital that are expected to
run these factories are barren of national feelings, what matters for the
owners of these expected capital are the profit that are going to come by and
when they don't, it will not take a second for the owners to pack and go, we
are seeing these example almost everyday, it happened in our country when
ground-nuts buyers could not coop with the conditions they were faced with. We
have argued that even though we need factories to produce but they must
correspond to our national needs, you don't produce just for the sake of
production. You have a Sankung Sillah with his plastic factory and yet still
importing simple things that could be produce in the country. Some of these
development thinking don't even entertain environmental consciousness.
You don't miss the failure of the APRC government in the war rhetoric of the
president in his July 22 anniversary speech. If the president is so confident
that the Gambia could resist and defeat an invasion from Guinea Bissau, a
nation two times bigger than us, with more military equipment and war
experience, then the president must have build a military force within this 8
years that many great nations can only dream of. This could not only be the
jet fighter but more modern and advance military equipments. The fact is that,
the war rhetoric of the president is just another attempt to divert our
attention to the failure of the APRC regime; our people are hungry and
suffering more than ever before. Kumba Yalla have more problems at home than
going to war with the Gambia, he has neither the resources nor the capacity to
wage a war so far away from home. If a poor nation like the Gambia can afford
flying jet fighters, it is no accident that those who are lending us monies
demand to dictate the use of our loans that we are going to pay back, for them
it is an investment, it is not that they have more than enough to give but
they needed more. An a serious warning, if it is true that these jet fighters
are from Ukrine, then the APRC must now stop with the airspace manoeuvres, we
will not be able to afford what happened today in Ukriane, the many dead and
injured persons are a national catastrophe, our little resources should go
some where else than to attain to such unnecessary accidents.
The achievements of the APRC regime for the past years are no hidden
statistics. Within 8 years we have a president with his private plane, we have
a military jet figter, we have many hospital building without necessary
equipments, we produce hundreds of half educated young people every year, we
have two State house, one in Banjul and one in Kaninlai.We have a president
who have a more attractive zoo than our national zoo that have existed since
before some of us were born. We produce a president who can tell us that not
even his grandchildren will be poor. We have also produced a fanatic State
house Imam who sees it as his duty to castigate our struggling sisters, we
have disguised security official that can go to Santag Jobarter and threaten
her with arrest just because she wanted to see more women in politics. And
produced a media bill condemned by every thinking human being well across our
national boundaries. We have political prisoners who are still lingering in
detention for more than two years, accused of plotting to overthrow and killed
the president. What is sick in this case of Dumo Saho and other is that, with
such serious charges against them, one would have believed that there are
enough evidence to get this case in court and finished with it, how can we
claimed to be a nation under the command of the rule of the law, when hard
working citizens, like Dumo Saho, putting all his energy in the cold winters
of Scandinavia, selling coffee and explaining to customer his vision, to
secure funds, not for himself, but for half educated students who are abandon
by the state and built a school for them, provide employment for those working
there and is not offered a decent and quick trial to proof his innocent of
charges made against him. If a Government can do such against hard working
Gambians and appoint Bakary Njie as an SOS, some one ordered to pay back
millions stolen from the nation, who could be surprised that we are a nation
heading to no where.
The Gambian people have been hard working, farmers who have to go to the media
to claim their monies after months of hard working, the ordinary people
working hard to afford school fees for their children, build their homes and
small business enterprises, the women activist, the oppressed and exploited
ordinary Gambian, the unemployed youths, who are today accused of been part of
our nations problems and not seen as resources are all the hopes of our
nation, these are the hard working and suffering people who are nurturing in
us the confident that we will survive the reactionary APRC regime as we did
with the 30 years of the neo-colonial PPP regime.
For Freedom
Saiks
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