By : ALKALI CHAM
Hopes for travelling abroad because of greener pasture for better living condition is rooting deep on daily basis in the heart and mind of youths.
The African sub region has recently experienced a massive brain drain of their youths to Europe for their insatiable of wealth, security and good living. This has virtually caused so much negative effect in the society we live because young people are the forces behind any positive developed society, when they continue taking risk which has potential to claim their lives then it is threatening.
Nowadays, not only in The Gambia, lives are lost in youth attempt to reach Europe and other western countries. In Africa, The Gambia especially most of this migrants are bread winners of their families. The worst part is that not only their families that rely on them but their communities and societies where they were brought up, as their leadership skills, initiatives and other related activities are important.
The grief this loss of live has caused to the society is immeasurable. Many children are left as orphans; women become widows and working places losses its hardworking employees in the hands of cold death allowing the society wallowing in endless grief.
The children who lost their parents in ‘backway’ journey in some societies are left without support in their educational endeavours and eventually such children education might be interrupted and thereby shattering their dreams. Education is the best tool to develop any human and society so due to this unfortunate journey, it has become nearly impossible for these children to fulfil their dreams and fundamental human rights.
More so, irregular migration has affected our farming sector especially in the provincial Gambia where farming is always at high gear among its occupants. In the past, in every community you visit will be fully occupied with energetic young people and they are the most active age groups in those communities that were active in farming. But now this is nearly impossible in our communities due to the insatiable greener pasture in Europe and better living condition which made some of them abandoning their farms to the aged ones.
Farming as known contributes highest per cent to the country’s GDP this makes it the backbone of the national economy. Therefore, if the production rate decline due to the large number of the migrated youths then our economy will be largely affected and farming for home consumption will equally be affected because the old people no longer have the strength to work on a large piece of land. Therefore more should not be expected from end of season harvest!
In nutshell, irregular migration has created a big vacuum in every society as many women turned widows, children turned orphans, and society is left wallowing in grief while stigmatization remains with women that lost their husband in this perilous journey while frustrations became number one tenant in the compound.
So it is a duty to all to ensure that the issue of illegal and irregular migration is curb in order to address the earlier mentioned problems for the best interest of all.
