By Tabora Bojang
The Gambia Immigration Department has inaugurated two new stations in Gunjur and Kartong in the Kombo South WCR to beef up border security and surveillance.
The Kartong station borders the Southern Senegalese region of Casamance while the Gunjur station located at the coastal town’s booming fishing centre was supported by the Chinese-owned fish meal plant Golden Lead.
The new stations are expected to ensure better trade facilitation, improve cooperation, ensure effective immigration border management system and security.
“The opening of these new stations forms part of the decentralization policy implemented by the GID, to strengthen and enhance operational capacity for all border control points,” director general of the GID Seedy M Touray said at the inauguration.
DG Touray said the new offices are expected to facilitate management, regular monitoring of people entering leaving the country, enhance coordination with counterparts, stakeholders in the field as well as provide support, advisory services to the command in the development of plans, strategies and policies on migration.
Touray who is also a native of Kombo South, expressed his administration’s commitment to extend the construction of new immigration posts in other regions as stipulated in the GID’s five-year strategic plan to ensure national security by curbing irregular migration, cross border crimes and other migration related crimes.
Immigration Commissioner for WCR Sulayman Kujabi said the establishment of the new stations was a culmination of community security approaches that stresses the need for regular and meaningful communication between community and security providers to build trust as well a sense of “us” rather than “us and them.”
He hailed the local authorities of the coastal settlements for providing the GID with lands for the erection of the new offices.
The Governor of the WCR Lamin Sanneh, Kombo South Chief Lamin Darboe sincerely congratulated the Immigration high command for the foresight in achieving a big milestone towards the full realisation of security sector reform in The Gambia.
Governor Sanneh hailed the local authorities of the coastal settlements for providing the GID with lands for the erection of the new offices as well as the support they rendered through the working stages of the stations.
