Gambia-L: The e-mail further below is sent to me by one of my sources in the Gambia. I am however sending it unedited. By the way, let me apologise to you for the long silence. I was so busy helping out in the organisation of the this year's African Liberation Day which was held in Birmingham on Sunday and Monday. One of the guest speakers at the Birmingham ALD was a Uganda Scientist, Professor Charles Ssali, who did research on AIDS; and in fact he has got an interesting information to share on the subject. You may browse through his web page www.mariandina.or.ug Ebrima Ceesay Birmingham, UK _____________________________________________________________________ Hello Ebrima, I am sure you do remember when the Brusubi Housing Project started. It was conceived toward the end of the Jawara era and immediately taken over by the AFPRC as one of their transition projects. That was in 1994. The Social Security Housing Finance Corporation (SSHFC) Managing Director, Andrew Sylva, told the Gambian Nation, in his GRTS interview of Saturday, that "phase one of the Brusubi Housing Project is virtually completed". What does phase one comprise of? It comprises 57 housing units, of which ONLY 3 units have been completed ( in six years) and "available for demonstration as samples to the public". I do not regard 3 completed units out of 57 as "virtually completed" even though we live in a virtual reality world. The second, third and fourth options (are you with me?) under the first phase comprise of empty undeveloped plots of which they have been able to dispose of a fraction. The project has been judged to be non-viable by several donors. Yet, Yankuba Touray (when he was in charge of AFPRC Projects) and Mr Sylva tried their best to peddle the idea to donors without success. They finally decided to finance almost the entire project out of the resources of social security - which is your Social Security payments (I assume The Daily Observer deducted social security from your meagre salary), my wife's and the ordinary person in the street. All of this in the name of promoting the cause of the AFPRC/APRC. In one of my earlier messages to you, I alluded to TAF CONSTRUCTION's competitors as partly responsible for his current woes. Well, the SSHFC is the most formidable competitor apart from that guy "Yahya Jammeh's business partner" who will remain nameless. The SSHFC has been opposed to TAF's project from the unset, and has written several letters opposing allocation of land to TAF. Andrew Sylva's claims in his interview, is to justify this Government's action against TAF and also to justify the continued involvement of SSHFC in such schemes. Mr. Sylva continues to nudge the SSHFC toward insolvency. Apart from non-viable and ill-conceived projects, he has been playing ball with this regime and using public funds in dubious transactions (arms, rice) which are outside the mission of the SSHFC for which he will be called upon to account one fine day. The housing finance arm of his organisation would have to be privatised at the appropriate time. Meanwhile, let us hope that the damage inflicted thus far will not render the SSHFC insolvent by then. Thanks as usual! ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------