By Adama Makasuba
Alpha Omar Jallow, former national assembly contender for the Sami constituency has blamed Physical Planning for the recent destructive flood that happened across the country.
“The government could have taken preventive measures before the start of the rainy season because this is an issue, we have been experiencing for the past 10 years. So, I believe the government could have come up with projects to tackle the floods.
“We have authorities responsible for this, we have Physical Planning and we have seen lots of buildings are wrongly built across the country. So, all these things could have been prevented by the government, but we are not seeing that happening. All we are seeing is them visiting those people and leaving them with desperation,” he said.
However, he added: “The Gambians know exactly the cost of living then and now the government would link it to the war between Russia and Ukraine. However, The Gambia should have been self-sufficient by now because we have a river which is not salty, and I am sure if we focus on this method the country will be able to feed itself.
“I expect the parliament to speak more on the fertilizer issue than what they have done. They could have done more effort than this to bring changes in the prices to the farmers. But to my surprise, they have not done much about it.”
“This is one of my agendas when I was contesting for the parliamentary election and I am a farmer. The price of fertilizer is still not sustainable I believe it will cause a lot of changes after the harvest of crops because prices of crops will surge.
“Definitely, I am not impressed with the economy, because if the economy was growing, we would not have been in this stage. I understand lots of our goods are not coming through our ports, many are coming from Senegal and that is a loss to our economy. So, I am urging the government to look into that, it is a concern,” he expressed.
