Interview with Talib Bensouda
With NyimaSillah
Not many young people are courageous enough to come up with a leadership idea and take up the initiative to lead, especially when they are University graduates.
Being a graduate makes some young people think they are office material. However, some have chosen a different path from what they intended to do in life. One such graduate is Kanifing Municipal Council (KMC) Mayor Talib Ahmed Bensouda. The Gambia youngest Mayor is doing well at the KMC and the United Democratic Party (UDP). Read more of my interview with my first GUEST in 2021.
The Voice: How was your office last year especially when the pandemic knocked in?
Mayor Bensouda: Due to the emerged of Covid-19 in The Gambia in March, 2020 my office was very disruptive. We are still going through the pandemic and that is an important point to note. Last year was something no one planned for we adopted a lot of functions. It was out of the blue that really disrupted our services administrative functions. Even with my ability as a Mayor, I later become one of the victims of Covid-19 that I have to take a lot of time to off from work to fully recover. So, it was a very difficult year.
The Voice: How was your revenue collection in 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic?
Mayor Bensouda: Revenue collection in 2020 was very challenging but we have managed to exceed our budget expectations. We put a lot of efforts in the second half of the year to really recover but it was a really challenging environment to get things done as the business community was also facing challenges.
The Voice: You have increase cleaning and garbage collection yet, residence are not adhering to environment cleaning. What do you have to say about this?
Mayor Bensouda: It’s very difficult to change old habits, so the council has come up with a lot of different approaches. Initially we have brought in the famous “Mbalit project” with 24 waste bins conducting residential and commercial collection. We also further brought in 500 street bins initiative whereby street bins are places all over the municipality where people can throw their trashes. We also came with communal skip bins which are big bins places in strategic places across the municipality for everyone to dump their trashes. And recently we have decided to also enhance our cleaning services. The street teams are doing their ability to keep the streets clean with Mobile Street bins.
However, we also introduced bylaws which we are currently promoting on the radios and TVs it has an anti-littering service so that people can adhere to the anti-littering laws. This is a real battle and we are fighting back and forth but we hope Gambians can comply because our biggest issue is compliance.
The Voice: KMC remains biggest among other councils in the country, but renting is still affecting people in this municipality. What is wrong with the KMC renting office?
Mayor Bensouda: Previously, probably a decade ago, the rent tribunal was under the Councilors but it was changed, and now the rent tribunal is under the Kanifing Court, under the Judiciary. So it is no longer under the purview of the council.
The Voice: The rent demand by the Landlords/Agents is becoming difficult for people/tenants. Does it mean that the Council cannot address this situation?
Mayor Bensouda: We heard rents are going higher this is bound to happen because there is a lot of urban rural migration. Many people want to live in the urban centers such as Kanifing for better jobs or better quality of live. And this is causing pressure on housing meaning enough houses are not been built. Therefore, rent rates are going higher because is a huge demand for living space.
For it to work, two things need to happen. One, we need a department of housing in this country or a Ministry of housing that will provides finance either to councils or to housing co-operations to build apartments. With that there can be a huge supply of housing and in this way the demand will go down rent rate will also go down.
In addition to that, government needs to take some policy decisions and one of the policies should be a price sealing on rents. This will create a sort of a safety net for vulnerable families and families who don’t have high incomes. I think the mixture of all these approaches and all these in credence will really create more living space and also bring down prices. But it needs to be initiated from the central government level because councils as of now don’t have power and that can only change through the legislative and executive.
The Voice: During your campaigns, there were so many promises made by you. Could you please tell us some of your achievements from these promises?
Mayor Bensouda: During the Mayoral election campaigns we have the five points manifesto. One of them was to build the council revenue, Two, to create employment, three, to improve the infrastructure, four, is to improve sanitation And I think we have really make strive in all of them. Sanitation of course is the most visible one.
In terms of infrastructure, we have built a few feeder roads, we have had a D100,000,000 million project with GAMWORKS including the Bundung Maternity hospital. Our new town hall building is ongoing, too. We ready with Latrikunda Market and we have created about 3 or 4 feeder roads by ourselves and recently we are embarking on markets expansion program which is to build 8 new markets. In our municipality that has a dual function improves infrastructure but also create opportunity for youths, women and people that are differently able and want to be engage in petty trade.
On employment opportunity, we have launched the D100, 000,000 million women fund to help women in business. We have also launched the D20, 000,000 youth fund to help the youths in business. We have also created “Toktos” that will also create employment opportunities for youths that want to engage in taxi services.
We also employed directly about 300 people since we came to the council and we are about to lunched municipal bus service which should employ more people. In terms of our revenue the council has manage to double its revenue from 2016 to date in 2020. The breakdown of our revenue from 2016 to date is as follows
2016: D125, 212, 521.00, 2017: D112, 504, 278.00, 2018: D142, 473, 018.00, 2019: D180, 415, 063.00 and 2020: D221, 885, 639.00.
In line with our promise we boost revenue because if you have more revenue you can have more development. Since we takeover, the revenue has been increasing and it double from 2017 to 2020. We are also ensuring that we are going to continue to push the revenue higher, so we are working on projects to boost the revenue we also digitalizing our revenue. So far we have digitalized our “Mbalit” collection service we plan to digitalize the market, licenses and rates. This will also ensure that linkages are eliminated.
We have also done with restructuring of the council staff. We are doing a lot of capacity building trying to fix the right pieces into the right place by looking at people’s background and skills to make sure they are working in a right environment, increase discipline and working culture and limit corruption and counterproductive activities. We have also covered almost all our promises if not all.
The Voice: What are some of the challenges facing your Municipality?
The challenges we are encountering are too many to count. But one of them is scarcity of resources, dealing with a lot of stake holders from central government to the general public to our councilors while ensuring that we balance the interest of all and serve the interest of all. Also, Booming of population, rural urban migration has caused our population to grow. There is a lot of people coming from the Diaspora and their prefer place to live is always KM. Also, neighboring settlements, this also is causing a lot of pressure on our services because no matter how we clean streets or environment we still find litters while the road becomes more congested which makes our work hard..
The Voice: The UDP congress was successful and you were elected as the Organizing Secretary and Campaign Manager. What do you expect in coming 2021 presidential election?
Mayor Bensouda: 2021 presidential election will be a very competitive election because there are many parties and of course there is an incumbent. We the members of UDP, too, also look at ourselves as incumbent. Because we control 6 area councils and we have the most national assembly members in the parliament. Naturally we also feel we have incumbency advantage.
We are facing a president who is of a different party and he is determining to stay long, and we have other parties who have been here like the GDC, APRC, PDOIS and a lot of new parties such as the Citizen’s Alliance, GAP and many other parties which is going to make the election more competitive.
As the national organizing secretary and the head of campaign and member of organizing committee, really we are self-prepared for taking the hearts and minds of Gambians. We believe giving the values of UDP, our manifesto to bring about lasting democracy and sustainable development and also our grassroots approach to politics by looking at the most vulnerable, depending on youths and women votes. We would like Gambians to be matured citizens and listen to the issue and not be taking away by short interest and personal interest. We believe if that is done UDP is in a good position to take over come 2021.
The Voice: we have almost 18 political parties do you think UDP can survive?
UDP is the biggest political party in the country. In our last election we carried 40% of the Local Government election vote. We carried about 42% of the National Assembly vote so UDP is still by far as far as evidence is concern the biggest party. We have to prove that come this next election a lot of political parties and we are not going to underestimate any political party, we look at our opponent as serious opponent.
However we standout because we are a party that is well structured, well organized, I think the congress has demonstrated that we are party that is very diverse in terms of culture. We like that because it reflects the true nature of The Gambia. We also have a party that is very diverse as far as age groups are concern because we have a lot of youth participation out of 33 executive members 30% are youths under the age of 35.
We also have a very good gender balance, we also have a party that has the first female national president ever in a political party and we also have the youngest first female Mayor. So our party is very diverse and is a true reflection of the country. More so, it has a lot of quality individuals.
We have cross sectorial expertise we have executive members and party members who have expertise in different sectors such as youth, education, health, Agriculture. So this is a party that is prepared and we call ourselves government in waiting.
The Voice: Is UDP going to accept alliance from any political party?
Mayor Bensouda: UDP is open to all parties that share common values and common interest. Of course, we cannot alliance with a party that does not share vision of sustainable development in The Gambia or a vision of democracy but as far as a party has those same co-principles to see a democratic Gambia and a Gambia that is developing at a rapid place then we see no reason why we will not acknowledge a party like that.
The Voice: we are seeing a lot of social media groups from online, TVs, radios, newspapers and many more media houses. Gambia is heading to politics of insult, what do you have to say about that?
Mayor Bensouda: I think 2016 has changed a lot in The Gambian. I saw a static somewhere that even though the population of Sierra Leone doubles Gambia but we use more internet data than Sierra Leone and this started since 2016. I think Gambians were in a cage and we were unleashed in 2016. Before that people for a long time did not engage much in politics they feared been active in politics.
But in 2016 when the country come together to bring about change we felt unleashed and we started engaging politically more than the average around the world. So every Gambia now on a daily bases is talking about political parties. I think is a good thing for our new democracy and hopefully after this election it could be a little bit more time so we can focus on national development because politics should not be forever. However we must talk about issues and talk about national development that is a politics that is more valuable so I just hope after this election we will have more focus development issues.
The Voice: What message do you have for people of The Gambia as far as you are concerned as Organising Secretary and Campaign Manager of UDP?
Mayor Bensouda: As the National Organizer and campaign manager of UDP my message to our militants is for them to open the doors keep welcoming people to the party and make sure that we always represent everybody. Because UDP is a party that believes in diversity, female participation and gender equality. We are party that believes in youth participation and a multi-cultural environment so we want them to promote those core values of the UDP.
The Voice: As the Mayor of KMC what is your message to Gambian people?
Mayor Bensouda: I’m talking as Mayor of KMC, we are entering to a very competitive election year and where we will have a lot of campaigns. I urge all Gambians to campaign with respect and dignity. Treat your opponents with utmost respect. You could always campaign for your ideas and values and you could always criticize your opponent but with respect and we want voters to also listen to issues and to be driven and guided by what they hear rather than what they get. So we want that politics of materialism or politics of tribalism kick-out from this country.
The Voice: Thanks for your time with us you!
To our readers you are welcome to contact me. I want you to be me next GUEST. Talk about your business, New NGO, School, politics and more. Just call or mail me. Tel: 76565712 –nyimasilla22@gmail.com