By Yunus S Saliu
Nfamara Jabang and Sulayman Sarr are among other people who were allegedly arrested by the Gambia Police Force for forging and using the Cruise Ship Crew Gambia (CSCG) documents to scam and defraud people to provide them visas, jobs on the cruise ship and stay in Europe.
The two main alleged forgers behind this, Nfamara Jabang and Sulayman Sarr with their documents graphic editor among others were arrested last week when their illegal act came to an open through one of their victims whose documents were suspected to be phishing.
Narrating this dubious act of these alleged forgers to this reporter in his office in Fajara, Mr Musa Drammeh, Director of Operation CSCG said he received a call from one of the Consulates saying “there are documents that I need to verify and confirm when one of the forgers’ victims’ documents was suspected.”
He affirmed that on careful peruse “those documents were all fakes. They were purported to be from CSCG but none of them emanated from our office or go through the CSCG due channel or process.”
Recruitment at CSCG, he explained, needs an applicant to go through all laid down international standard processes which include form filing, interview, and basic training at GTTI where applicant or applicants will be certified or qualified to apply for the Seaman Book at the Gambia Maritime Administration and fulfill the medical requirement tests, acquiring of the police report and so on.
However, he said, in opposition to the above, the alleged forgers created CSCG documents among others with the aid of their graphic designer who always “edit and make some alterations of the LOE and LOI issued to qualified candidates with other people’s names through using computer.”
Mr. Drammeh disclosed that one of the alleged forgers, NfamaraJabang once applied for a Cruise Ship job at the CSCG and succeeded, he was awaiting his deployment but “his visa application was rejected at the American Embassy two times. From thereon he has been going around canvassing people to register and collect money from innocent people and forged our documents and the international document called LOE and LOI (Letter of Employment and Letter Of Invitation) in his possession with the aid of their graphic designer who will make the alteration and edit them on the computer). He was doing this with Sulayman Sarr who works at Payless Travel Agent.”
The CSCG Director of Operation emphasized that recruitment at Cruise Ship Crew Gambia is free of charge as “opposed to the alleged forgers, Nfamara Jabang and his counterpart, SulaymanSarr who always charged the innocent young Gambians an outrageous amount of D100,000 and D200,000.00 depending on the country of applicants’ choices without no recruitment process.”
According to Nfamara Jabang connection, “When applicants take the fake LOI and LOE documents to the Gambia Maritime Administration they will pay for Seaman Books which will allow those applicants to apply with fake documents. Initially, the Consulates accepted them to be genuine but with the influx of applicants, they noticed that they were not sent by the recruitment agent (CSCG) in the country, therefore, they suspected the genuineness of documents and raised alarm to contact us.”
Meanwhile, the investigation is opened by the police after their arrest.