By: Nyima Sillah
EMPAS Poultry Processing Company has called on government to come to their support. This call was made at a conducted tour at the poultry farm in Farato.
Speaking to journalists, Isatou Sanyang, Human Resource Manager of EMPAS gave background of the poultry which was inaugurated by the former government in December 2012 and the first hatch processing starts in October 2014 including chicken production.
The company had a break down due to some financial issues in 2017 and they took a break for a duration of five years which is a pity because that caused a huge loss of employment for the youth in the country, until of recent when they heard about the bird flew in Senegal they decided to come on board and support their fellow Gambians because they cannot sit back and watch the poultry industry to fold.
According to her, they are planning to bring back the industry to its normal operations and because they don’t want Gambians farmers to buy chickens from Senegal the hatchery available in the industry can produce over hundred thousand (100,000) chicks every 21days and it can be expanded if government can assist them.
Modou Mass Jobe, poultry consultant for EMPAS said that fuel waiver is their number one constrains because NAWEC is not stable and the machines have to run for 24hrs if they put in the eggs, you don’t switch off the machine even a minute.
That is why automatically when NAWEC goes off the generator is on. “If we have a duty waiver from the fuel that we consume from the government it will help reduce their price that is part of production cost which is very heavy, he said.
He added: “sometimes we don’t process anything but NAWEC charge us D20,000. the last time they charge us D40,000 plus. Therefore, we want to look at how we are going to make sure that this energy cost through NAWEC is limited and how we going to get duty waiver on fuel so that we can operate efficiently through the support of government.”
