By Binta Jaiteh
Honorable Yaya Sanyang NA member of the LatriKunda Sabiji has urged the members of the National Assembly to approve the convention on the protection of Underway Cultural Heritage Paris 2001, to regain the dying tourism industry. He said this will add a new product to the Industry.
Speaking during the debate, he said all know that River Gambia is the oldest route used by Europeans dating back to 1446, and for that being the case there will be the incident of wars and ships sinking, noting that the Ministry trained underground geologists who can be able to dive and see this underground heritage
‘’The villages where these cultural heritages are found whether they are being engaged because they have to take ownership of it by way of management and future intervention and also whether the Ministry of Education is aware because our curriculum needs to be changed and our students need to know about the underground heritages so that it can be inculcated in the curriculum from Basic up to high school level’’ he said
Nfally M Kora, NA member of Tumana said I register my appreciation to this convention, this is very important as far as I understand because our heritages are very important to our present day. We will have a lot of resources out of them and I thank the Ministry on behalf of my constituency which is Tumana for coming up with this initiative. He noted that Senegal is overtaking the country on some of these great initiatives because they are coming up with great initiatives that super cover the country.
He said, with the Ministry coming up with this it will neutralize the challenge and there are a lot of benefits attached to this convention.
Honourable Suwaibou Touray, NAM of Wuli west noted that Youths are very active in culture, there is a park called Mungo Park at Sami Karanata riverside and they are very much interested in developing it to a reservation for the Eco-Tourism act. This convention is dealing with one very important thing: people who are dealing with party parks stealing and taking them away as they said it is threatened by unauthorized activities.
However, “if you go to a European museum, you will find out that almost half of their museum is filled with African artisans, they used to call us primitive people but they stole all our artifact and keep them in their museums and they are using it for Tourism we should all fight so that they can pay reparation for that,” he argued.
