By Omar Bah
The mayor of Kanifing municipality has accused the National Environment Agency, (NEA) of trying to politicise the national cleansing exercise, set-settal.
Speaking at a press conference Wednesday, Yankuba Colley said the NEA’s decision to organise last Saturday’s set-settal without consulting his office was an act of sabotage calculated to paint a bad image of his leadership.
“The NEA deliberately staged Saturday’s cleansing exercise ignoring my office’s suggestion to push to another weekend to allow us to mobilise more manpower. I am very disappointed with the NEA and I must admit that the situation is getting out of control. I don’t know, but maybe some people are just doing this to the [Kanifing Municipal Council] to sabotage my leadership because I come from the opposition APRC,” Mayor Coley lamented.
He said the majority of the KMC’s workforce is old people and the council had to cough up D200, 000 just to collect and dump the waste.
“At one point, we even had to seek help from the military. I want to make it very clear that, KMC didn’t organise the last cleansing exercise and that being the case, nobody should blame us for anything. We advised the NEA not to stage it at that time but they refused to adhere to our recommendation,” he grumbled.
He pointed out: “Gambians should recognise the fact that Kanifing is the biggest municipality in the country… and it is obvious that the Council don’t have the capacity to do it all alone.
“I would also like to call on all Gambians to put their political differences aside and focus on national development. Yes, I am from the APRC, but that doesn’t mean that people should work towards my downfall at the expense of the entire council and municipality. We have to be patriotic and rise above partisan politics,” Mayor Colley concluded.
