By Mustapha Jarju
Fishermen of Kasewa village in Upper Niumi have requested from the relevant authorities to help their situation by providing them cold storage facility for the preservation of their products.
The fishermen called on government of the Gambia to help them with a fish plant, which they will use to keep their fish, and also help them with accessible road to the river as the condition of the road is bad.
Omar Sidibeh, a fisherman who spoke exclusively to The Voice on behalf of the fishermen, highlighted their challenges, disclosed they don’t have refrigerators to keep their fish.
“If we have refrigerators and solar that can be used to make ice block, we can place it around the river bank if we catch fish we can store them there especially when they are returned from market or have no buyers to buy them. So we can keep the fish to avoid spoil,” he said.
“We used to take our fish to Barra market and before we get there sometimes most of the fish will spoilt because we don’t have good road to access the main highway and mobility is also a challenge for us,” he explained.
“The most important thing that we will seek from the government is road, for us to have a road to the river bank so that if we catch fish there we will not waste time as we can easily rush to Kuntaya with a motorbike. Because we used to catch fish pile them inside pan and carry on our head to the mainland. This is really a challenge for us, we still call on the government to help us with refrigerators,” he added.
According to him, they either use a motorcycle or a donkey or horse cart to transport the fish from the river bank to the main highway in Kuntaya to board vehicle to Barra.
