Human Rights defender attacks gov’t over ‘negligence’ of Gambians living standard

By Landing Colley

Top human rights lawyer and defender has slammed government for being negligence about the poor living standard of Gambian people.

His attack on Barrow’s administration followed the Smart Construction released result of a survey which shows that 90% of Gambians are homeless. And that those who could afford a house are 5 percent while the remaining 5 percent can’t afford cost of a house.

Speaking with Lawyer Assan Martin, he said “government is not interested in social disasters affecting us in society even when a survey reported that most Gambians being homeless, a human rights issue that must be addressed.”

He described it as violation of human rights because “every Gambian should have a decent place to live and the institutions responsible for that should be able to address these issues affecting people who are homeless.”

Lawyer Martin said government is not interested in the social welfare of the citizen but only interested in securing position and reading propaganda for the government.

According to him the government has no land policy and data in order to find solution to what are affecting Gambians, especially, the failure of land policy. He said it is ‘sad’ to seeing people being displace because of not having home.

“The Ministry of Lands is only interested in politics when they should be thinking of having a greater plan to fix the land policy and how to make sure they preserve the land for the future use,” he argued.

The human rights lawyer continued that “the Ministry of Local Government is a disaster and there is poor failure of leadership as we have seen land disputes rampart in the country, which is a very big concern. We expect the system to be promising for the past four years but land dispute has been handling recklessly,” he said

However, he called on Gambians to take action and elect new government that is competent and to address this issue affecting people as they have not seen a good policy implemented by this current government regarding the affairs of its citizen.