By: Momodou Justice Darboe
UDP’s deputy administrative secretary for external affairs in the diaspora Dr.Lamin Manneh has revealed that the Gambia government has perfected plans to concede the Banjul International Airport (BIA) to a private investor(s) after spending 50 million dollars on its rehabilitation two years ago.
“They [the government] have floated a tender for the construction of a new airport. It [BIA] is concessioned out…worse than recycling,” Dr. Manneh disclosed in an interview with Coffee Time With Peter Gomez on Tuesday.
“We spent 50 million dollars two years ago to rehabilitate the airport. They spent 10 million dollars to upgrade the VIP lounge… 40 million dollars to rehabilitate the Banjul International Airport and you don’t even have air conditioning there. Nothing has been done. You spent 50 million dollars on the airport with nothing to show for it. And then, you turn around the next minute to say oh, by the way, we going to concession it out to somebody… he is going to build a new airport. And that person is going to be running the airport,” he argued.
According to the UDP diaspora affairs chief, the conditions of the concession have yet to be made clear to the masses. He continued: “We don’t even know under what conditions it’s going to be done. The tender is very vague. What percentage will be paid back to The Gambia as a dividend or as our share in a PPP or whatever they might want to call it, how long is that concession going to be? So, the revenue we are supposed to obtain from the airport will all go to some foreign entity, and for how long, we don’t know… how are we going to get, we don’t know. Why do we need to concession out the construction of a new airport when you have one that can be functional and we just upgrade it properly and honestly?”