By Tabora Bojang
Interior Minister Abdoulie Sanyang has said his ministry “faces problems in sustaining” existing police stations in the country.
The challenges, he added, stems from costs of operation, mobility and maintenance.
Sanyang made these admissions in response to a parliamentary question by Sanementereng NAM Fatou Cham who asked if the ministry had plans to build a police station in Sanchaba, a crime ridden locality.
Minister Sanyang responded: “You don’t [just] build police stations because the community wants you to build a police station. Currently we are having problems in sustaining our existing police stations. You don’t go anywhere in the world and have five police stations within a two-mile radius. If you go to Serekunda, Bundung, Latrikunda you have about five to six police stations within a two-mile radius. You don’t have that anywhere. And we are even trying to see how we can reduce the number of police stations and also add capacity of the personnel in particular stations, so that they can do patrols and policing.”
Sanyang, who served as head of the police from 2021 to March 2024, said the police are also constrained by insufficient funding to carry out maintenance in police stations. “When you have a budget of D1 million or D500,000 for renovation, what would that do to renovate even a single house or a single police station? You have to understand that most of our stations are rented stations. I can say up to 60 percent of them are rented, so the budget is not there for us to do a proper renovation. Even D10 million is not enough to do a proper renovation of all the police stations because we are talking of up to 150 police stations.”
He however stated that with the support of the German Police and GIZ, the police have modern stations in Serekunda and other parts of the Kombos and there are plans to build more in the rural areas.
Crime rate
Several lawmakers raised concerns about the rising crime rate in the country.
But the minister contended that there is in fact a drop in violent crimes putting The Gambia among among countries with the lowest crime rates in the world. “Our crime rate is very low. Up to now we are registering 21 break-ins per week and that means three break-ins a day. You don’t have that kind of crime rate anywhere in the world. So, we are trying our best,” Minister Sanyang added.
