Mr Sillah,

I do enjoy your writing. It surfaced some of the fiscal and monetary
policies made by experts in the Gambia including you to simulate economic
growth. Your analysis illustrates the working nature of these two
departments but ignored the impacts of policies made by the departments
(Fiscal & Monetary) to the Gambian economy.

I do want to learn why the Government of the Gambia continue to pursue
current economics policies? Policies that effected in shifting interest rate
upward and allowing inflation to jump, double digit in the short and medium
term. Why Human capital is in excess (unemployment)? A resource the nation
needs and losing to the advantages of the West. What measures are taken by
the fiscal department to reduce the outflow of Gambia youths, teachers,
nurses, doctors, entrepreneurs and other professionals?

The later is my concern and therefore, I would like to give some comments.
The problem of migrating to the west is related to unemployment and
unemployment is related to jobless growth as human capital and entrepreneurs
leaves the Gambia. My question now is why are we leaving the Gambia in so
great a number? This enormous drainage of human resources is attracted out
of the Gambia by a different social set-up. Attractions that I believed are
more of an imagination than a reality. Why is this happening and what policy
is in the pipeline to make a halt for this enormous brain drain?

Many of these young Gambians are facing a lot of disappointments in the
west. Trap in a world of disillusions, seeing their dreams being turned to
nightmares. Only few of them received education and training to perform
service, find employment and flee life-threatening situations. The rest
involves in criminal and trafficking networks, drugs and prostitution. The
trained doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals left a privileged
life in the Gambia coming in the west doing low esteem jobs. As a result
their training, knowledge and expertises are lost to both the Gambia and
their host country.

Critics may argue that the principal supports of our families at home are
the higher remittances we earned abroad. These benefits are meagre and
temporary compared to that of their host country. The overall benefits
provided by these young migration goes to the host countries by correcting
their ageing population structures, downsizing older workforces in favour
for cheaper, younger workforce, profiting from the knowledge of younger
minds, and sustaining their welfare system. This is good for the host
country and bad for the Gambia. And it will be of no help for the Gambia to
catch up with the western living standard.

The solution for the Gambia is to seek direct foreign investment for
education, health, agriculture, and fisheries sectors, with the objective of
raising the productivity of labour in the Gambia, so that if 20 to 30% of
the workforce migrates it might not affect the overall Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) of the country. I’m not stressing to obstruct or even prevent
migration, but to better manage it for the benefit of all. The Gambian
workforces migrating to the west has to be regulated. Today, there are no
legal channels open for those who want to migrate and whose labour might be
needed.

Pa Che

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