We are respectfully drawing the attention of the Gambia Police Force Inspector General (IGP) to the shutdown of the traffic lights located at various junctions in Serekunda and no efforts from his office to establish more in the Kanifing and West Coast Region.
The traffic lights located at the West Field junction in Serekunda as the road joins the main Tippa Garage Highway have not worked for a year. Many others are in a similar situation, and surprisingly there appears to be no effort at reversing the situation.
Those joining the major highways from the West Field end, especially in the evening, are confronted with risk. They could be rammed into as it happens occasionally, by oncoming speeding vehicles. As pointed out in a preceding paragraph, there are others along the Serekunda – Sukuta highway posting similar features.
Besides this near-permanent non-functioning of some traffic lights, the Kairaba Avenue traffic lights sometimes go off only to come on later, with nobody trying to intervene. Before then, however, many motorists would have had to pay dearly for daring to drive through without the support of a traffic cop.
The majority of the streetlights in Serekunda have not been working for some time now, as are others elsewhere.
The bottom line of the foregone is that the authorities charged with managing such facilities must fashion out a means of addressing some of these little yet critical shortcomings. When such situations persist, the undeniable impression is that somebody being paid to discharge a particular function is not living up to expectations.
The nation’s commercial capital should not be managed this way, and this is why we are devoting this space to this subject.
We are constrained to point out that somebody somewhere is not doing their work well, and these people should tell us what is happening.
In a country where ‘arrest and detention ’ are no longer one of our headaches, there is no reason why some traffic and street lights should not work for close to a year or more especially in the nation’s commercial capital.
With enough motorbikes at Gambia Police Force, some of these motorbikes can be used for traffic patrols; this way when cops identify non-functioning traffic lights they would move quickly to the locations for the appropriate intervention.
There should also be a way of communicating with the appropriate quarters about non-functioning traffic lights and locations where holdups occur and, therefore, require police intervention.
This is how modern societies work, and we expect to see changes in that direction soonest.
Five decades after independence is such a long period. We should quickly put this antiquated way of doing things behind us. Yes, we can, and now is the time.