By Mafugi Ceesay
The National Assembly member for Tumana constituency, Foday Drammeh has told The Standard that the Barrow administration has failed to deliver its promises to the people of Tumana.
He said his constituency is the only one in the entire country that does not have a hospital and a clean drinking water.
“Barrow’s administration has kept promising my people of hospital and safe drinking water but always fails and comes with flimsy excuses. Tumana is the only constituency in the whole of URR with a population of 40 thousand inhabitants without a single health centre and from 2017 to date, there are lots of flimsy excuses from the Barrow administration and they kept failing and this is our constitutional right. We are not beggars and in that regard, the people of Tumana feel betrayed by Barrow and he is not serious about the life and livelihood of the people of Tumana.
“Today, the water that the people of Kombo are using to flush their toilet is far better than what the people of Perai Tenda are using to drink. Barrow has promised them a borehole that is supposed to come from the Japan project since 2017 but up to date, he never fulfilled his promise and the only source of water was provided by Saudi Arabia Aid some 40 years ago and at the moment, the entire community is confuse since the only source of water is down.
“I am telling you today that the local hand pump that the Perai community has been using for over 40 years went down and they are only getting water from open spaces. Diarrhea is the order of the day in Perai. Are we all not in the same country with the same constitutional entitlements?” he asked.
Perai is on the South bank of the Upper River Region, with over two thousand inhabitants and with a cattle population of over one thousand and 85 to 90 households.
“In one of the debates in the parliament, I asked the minister to come up with a supplementary bill which the members will support since it’s an open secret that the water that the people in urban areas use to flush their toilets is cleaner than the water that some of the rural communities are drinking. Some of these communities walk for two kilometers just to have safe drinking water. Some of them have to cross the border to Senegal for safe drinking water, which is putting hardship on their livelihood, farms and their animals.
Tamba Sangsang, Perai Tenda and Sanu-nding are all suffering and need urgent help,” he added.
