'Baddibu is Not Left Out' The Daily Observer (Banjul) June 26, 2001 Posted to the web June 26, 2001 Banjul Report reaching the Daily Observer has it that FASE 2.5 million dollars project launched recently to fight poverty touches all the administrative divisions in the country except North Bank Divsion because of being 'an opposition zone'. The reports also revealed that excluding North Bank Division in FASE programme is not well calculated because when you talk about poverty, NBD is among the poorest division in the country and is supposed to enjoy any project initiated to help the Gambian people. Reacting to some of these allegations, Abdou Touray, national coordinator for SPACO said that it's true that North Bank was not included in FASE programme to fight poverty but denied that the action was not political. He added the survey that was conducted revealed that their was no malnutrition in the area and the poverty margin was very low compared to other divisions. Mr. Touray further explained that the FASE programme was targeting the poor and vulnerable groups and it would be a waste of resources to intervened in an area where the poverty trend was very low. The results gathered during the first phase which ended in March 2001 indicated that URD was the poorest division in the country followed by LRD, CRD, NBD, WD and the Greater Banjul Area. He pointed out that concentrating on those areas was very urgent because the poverty trend was on the increase especially in Brikama and the Greater Banjul Area because of rural-urban magiration and 25 per cent out of the 60 per cent living under the poverty line were living in the urban areas. He revealed that poverty had increased from 60 per cent to 69 per cent from 1992 to 1998 because of limited resources and the experience gathered in the first phase would enable them in the second phase to eradicate poverty by year 2015. Mr. Touray also said that the Gambia Government was coming out with a poverty policy framework with concentrated programme which would at least lead to the reduction of poverty by 2.5 per cent per annum during the next 14 years to come. He said in order to coordinate all the intervention areas and the result to reach the poor in an efficient and timely manner also required a concrete effort from government development partners, the private sector, since poverty was multi dimensional not sectoral.. Copyright © PEACE TOMBONG _________________________________________________________________________ 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 You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------