By Tabora Bojang
The leader of the opposition People’s Democratic Organisation for Independence and Socialism Halifa Sallah has raised issues with government’s decision to award Turkish investor Albayrak, a concession contract to operate the Banjul port.
The Gambia government entered into a 30 -year concession agreement with Albayrak to invest and take over all operational activities of the Banjul port for 6 years and the building and operating of a new port in Sanyang for 24 years.
Sallah, the latest opposition leader to express concern over the agreement, argued that government awarded the contract without trying and testing the Turkish company in terms of investment.
“They told us that Albayrak has been given a contract for a 30 -year concession. They have not even tried the company with its investment. At least that’s where you start before you go bigger,” the veteran politician said at his party’s congress at The Kairaba Hotel over the weekend.
He added; “The company [Albayrak] aims to invest about D1.5 billion to improve port facilities. But they [government] took money for the [Senegambia] Bridge, and say it is recycling for $100 million to be given by installments. So by 2025, they will have at least received D3.5 billion. Why didn’t you use D1.5 billion from that money and do the investment that Albayrak is making at Gambia Ports Authority?”. Halifa said government’s way of doing things cannot address Gambia’s underdevelopment challenges.
“The Gambia that we now have is not a Gambia that can eradicate the poverty of our people. Fifty-three (53) percent of our people are living in abject poverty, and that is over a million people. The Minister of Finance during his last budget speech said the social protection budget is D100 million. But divide D200 million between 1 million people and everybody gets D200 in shares. That’s how they want our social protection to be and they write these things, appearing that they are doing something. You read the budget speech and look at the portion about youths and you don’t see things about employment statistics for young people. But if you follow the Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBOS) it tells you that 41 percent of the youth populations are not in education, employment and training. Look at women, they will tell you about matching grants but then the statistics will see 81 percent of productive Gambians are in the informal sector-agriculture, industry and service. Agriculture should be the backbone, they will tell you they have invested 35,000 tons of fertiliser and 1000 tons of organic fertiliser but where are the products they are exporting after all that investment,” he asked.
According to him, in 2024 alone Gambia exported D3 billion worth of products and imported D67 billion worth of products, a deficit of D64 billion. “We are not exporting. We are dependent. We cannot take care of ourselves. And over 200,000 tourists they claimed are targeted to come to the country but are the vegetables going to the hotels? Is the fish going there? Is the meat going there? Where is the economy that would have generated the foreign exchange that you need instead of being bought elsewhere. What type of products are we producing that tourists will buy from Gambians? What they do is to take [tourists] to Juffureh or the Stone Circles etc. But what are they going to do there? What do they explain there? What is the attraction? How does it sell ordinary Gambians?”, Sallah asked.
He further suggested that for the country’s agricultural development to be realised “we must take our sovereign wealth, invest it in corporate banking, so that it helps farmers to have enough seed and fertiliser to be able to do large scale production.
The PDOIS leader also criticised the lack of housing schemes in lower cost for civil servants, proper training for teachers, dysfunctional health care and educational systems saying building classrooms alone is not enough and will not solve the problem but “we must look at the qualified teacher to the student ration, the learning material ratio and the classroom materials ratio.”
