By Binta Jaiteh
President-elect His Excellency Adama Barrow has announced sum of $50 million for the fishing sector to help industrialize it in his government bid for food self-sufficient drive and job creation.
Barrow who was speaking to reporters at the State House a day after he was declared winner of the December 4 presidential election made this promise.
He said with confidence that “We have funding from our partners of about US$50 million. This is all for fishing. We want to industrialize the fishing sector so that youths will be trained to make sure they are involved in fishing that will create jobs and boost economy of the country.”
According to him, education has been one of the government’s top priorities and it will remain top and that he believes in infrastructural development to create the environment for everybody.
“Mortality rate statistics have dropped drastically from 2017 to now, my government is working towards that as far as the sector is concern’’ he added disclosed that his government has started supporting women while funding has been granted specially to assist women who are doing business “a project that will continue from 2022 to 2026.”
“We will take farming as a business and Industrialise the agricultural sector so that we can produce enough to feed this country. If you are not producing you will become a liability and to avoid that we have to produce to compete and control,” he added.
However, he said that people don’t understand the coming of the ECOWAS in this country, they didn’t come only to take Jammeh but to assist the country and The Gambia is not paying them. When I was coming everybody knew that the security was polluted and we needed to reform it to support the country.”
Commenting on the just concluded election, he said “this election was conducted by Independent Electoral Commission so it is not me to say whether to accept or not. We all depend on the decision of the Commission who is responsible for election matters. There were other institutions supporting the IEC but for the first time 6 former presidents came to observe the elections process. They helped the country to make sure that there is free, fair, transparent and peaceful elections and we are a third world country and challenges are unlimited,” he said to the listening press members.