By Adama Makasuba
Police, on Friday, toured and sanctioned no-activities on a disputed land area between Busura and Talokoto, disputing land area using for agricultural farming since 2015, as the two villages nearly took the disputed issue into their own hands.
Police now put an injunction on the area as the government trying to settle the matter.
Police enforcement team led by Police Commissioner for West Coast Region, PatehJallow told both sides to stop ongoing activities at the disputed areas of the land with immediate effect pending the outcome of the results from the government on the matter.
Speaking to reporters shortly after the long hours of touring the land, Pateh Jallow said: “I am only here for fact finding or a site visit of the two opposite sides.”
“Busura is claiming that side and these other people (of Talokoto) are claiming this other side. So therefore, I feel it is very important and enough for me to come here and verify where these people are contesting and (what the police can do) is to place injunctions, because (what) all the police can do here is to make sure that the injunction is enforced, other than that we cannot do anything,” he added.
Meanwhile, he referred the media to the Police spokesman for details into the land dispute, adding his service ethics do not allow him to speak to reporters on this.
Alieu A Faye, Alkalo of Busura told reporters that “our community is with the strong conviction that we own the land cleared by our forefathers up to today,” while accused the people of Talokoto of taking the law into their own hands.
“We tried to dialogue through the Kombo South Chief and the Kombo Central Chief, but they (Talokoto) are not listening because the injunction was passed that we should hold on until this thing is settled, but they never listened,” he said.
However, Talokoto village head, Olimatou Colley, declined to speak to journalists about the issue.