Dear editor,
I have been a Gamtel internet user for a while now here in Bakau, Mamakoto. I pay D2,500 monthly subscription which I never failed to honour. However, in July last year, after paying that month’s subscription, I suddenly lost connectivity without any prior warning or explanation from Gamtel. It’s been an incredibly frustrating experience since then.
Despite repeated attempts to resolve the issue, I found myself disconnected from the digital world, facing significant challenges and disruptions in daily life. I have placed a million calls to the Bakau branch and even the head office but all the calls yielded no tangible solutions, exacerbating my frustration and inconvenience.
It’s unacceptable for a service provider to leave their customer without internet access for such an extended period, especially without providing adequate explanations or swift remedies.
For months, the only thing Gamtel assured me is “our team will be coming there and your problem will be solved” which sounds like a computer-generated response. I am now fed up and disappointed in the service provider.
Hopefully, someone at Gamtel will read this and pass word to the management that a customer has been left frustrated and upset.
Buba Balajo
Bakau
Commemorating 75 years of the UDHR
It was another fulfilling day in celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the Human Rights Club of the Nusrat Senior Secondary School. Following a march past, I had the unique opportunity and honour to speak to the students about human rights.
I reminded the school boys and girls that the very essence and purpose of human rights are to uphold human dignity – that inherent value of humanness that we all have individually and equally just because we are human. That the human being is an embodiment of respect regardless of origin, religion, ethnicity, disability, sex, race or by other status.
I told them that the respect and protection of human rights begins with us as individuals in our homes, with our friends, neighbors and in communities, in the streets and in the school and in work places and everywhere we are. Regardless of our position, wealth, relationships, power or age etc, all human beings are equal in dignity. No one has more or less dignity than another. The king and the pauper have equal human dignity.
I told them that dignity can be enhanced or reduced or damaged. The more we respect, protect and fulfill rights the more we enhance human dignity. Human dignity is determined by the quality of living standards we enjoy such as quality healthcare, quality education, developed communities, availability of opportunities, security, quality public goods and services, among others.
Hence human dignity is injured and reduced by poor living conditions such as poverty, hunger, lack of good roads or poor water and electricity supply, injustice, deprivation, lack of opportunities and abuse. Therefore, damage to human dignity is when we disregard human rights. This means we disrespect, discriminate, dehumanize and therefore violate human rights with impunity.
While sharing with them the history of the UDHR, I lamented that despite massive achievements in human rights across the world such as the gaining of independence from colonialism, yet the incidence of violations is still widespread in our homes and society at large. These violations are perpetrated by individuals such as ourselves at home and in the community and in our work places and also by governments, organizations and companies in so many ways.
I could not end my conversation with the students without mentioning the genocide that’s been perpetrated by Israel on the people of Palestine. I noted with deep grief that it was in 1948 that both the UDHR and the state of Israel were created by the United Nations yet 75 years today the Palestinians are denied the rights granted by the UDHR!!!
Therefore, I told these boys and girls that to be a human rights advocate, activist, defender or protector is to believe in and uphold the sanctity of the dignity of each and every human being. It is to respect oneself and everyone else regardless of who or what they are. It is to realize that ultimately the security, peace and progress of any individual, community and nation on earth depends on the quality of respect, protection and fulfillment of human rights. As noted in the Preamble of the UDHR, if people are not to be compelled to resort to rebellion, then human rights must be protected.
Uphold and defend human rights today. Everyday.
Madi Jobarteh
Kembujeh
