By Omar Bah
Karpowership, the Turkish energy company operating in The Gambia, has donated 5,000 facemasks to the Fatou Bah-Barrow Foundation (FaBB) Tuesday afternoon.
In presenting the facemasks at a ceremony in the First Lady’s Office at State House, Karpowership country manager Yankuba Mamburay said the donation was made in response to a request from FaBB for facemasks for schoolchildren in the country.
He said the distribution of the facemasks was scheduled to take place at the time of the reopening of schools but noted that the preventative masks were still needed, as the coronavirus was still prevalent.
Mr Mamburay said his company was pleased to once again collaborate with the First Lady’s foundation as whatever was given was for onward transmission to the Gambian people.
He recalled that that since the breakout of the pandemic earlier this year, Karpowership had among other things donated five ventilators worth six million dalasis to the government, sugar, rice and oil to communities in Lower River and North Bank regions, the police and other institutions including FaBB.
The Karpowership manager disclosed that the government has extended the power purchase contract with his company for a further two years in May and thanked the government and Nawec for giving them the opportunity to operate in The Gambia.
He said although power generation is the core business of Karpowership, the company has been among the most engaged in the country in dispensing its corporate social responsibility.
Receiving the donated masks, Fatou Ceesay, a member of the FaBB board, thanked Karpowership for the “timely and significant” donation. She observed that although no “huge spikes” in the cases of Covid-19 were recorded after the reopening of schools, the masks would go a long way in protecting schoolchildren in the country.
Boxes containing the masks were later formally handed over to a much-pleased First Lady Fatou Bah-Barrow.
Karpowership which is part of the Karadeniz Group, started operations in The Gambia on 2nd May 2018.
