By Yunus S Saliu
Embarking on a weeklong industrial visit to different companies, agencies, and departments, the Honorable Minister for Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment (MoTIE) has expressed dissatisfaction over the challenges facing some of the factories in the country, especially on manpower, saying it is disheartening in this country seeing unskilled labour outsource.
Honourable Minister Baboucarr Ousmaila Joof who was responding to some questions from the press corps during his visit to the Salam Company Limited, a company manufacturing cement, steel among others, at Mile 5, Denton Bridge on Monday, 16th January 2023 said the country has grown proportionally “and we have the youth to do these jobs.” The Honourable Minister of MoTIE was accompanied on this tour by his Deputy Permanent Secretaries, technicians and some other senior officials from his Ministry.
The Minister who was fascinated with what he saw in the company regarding investment made it clear that his Ministry was not on a tour or a visit to look for fault, error or problem but “we come to share our expertise and experiences to help a very genuine Gambian (proprietor of the company) who has brought all he got and invested it in the country.”
He noted that “if you invest in industrialization or industry in this country you are enabling the economy to flow, and you are helping us to excel we are the Ministry of Trade and also Employment and you are helping in creating employment we’re killing four birds with one stone at the same time.”
So “here, what fascinated me is the level of investment up to the level of progress been made. We have seen the expansion together that is underway and even with the current level of production, this Salam Company Limited is in a position to fill the domestic market with the product that should be target number one,” the Minister observed.
He went further that there is possibility of the domestic market rely exclusively on this and “that is going to create a lot of buffer in term of our imports. And with this expansion underway there is also a possibility of start targeting taking our product as a country beyond our borders to other countries, and within the African Free Trade Continental Arrangement there is also a possibility that this will be one of the products which will target other African countries as Gambia product Made in The Gambia to cross the border and make sales.”
Among other issues discussed, he said he has collected information regarding the company’s challenges which come along with every progress and “as a government we will find ways to ameliorate the challenges the company is facing to ease off the burden of the company to enable them increase the rate of their employment, production and that way we will also see a contribution to the economy growing up.”
He, therefore, thanked Mr Sillah for this huge investment.
Muhammad Sillah proprietor/CEO Salam Company Kimited who had taken the Minister and member of his delegates on conducted tour of the company outlined few of the challenges they are facing at the company.
Among the challenges include people for employment, production, electricity power supply, logistic regarding raw materials, vessel arrival and so on.
However, he thanked the Honourable and his team for taken their time to visit Salam Company Limited to know how they are fearing.
