By Binta Jaiteh
Permanent Secretary Ministry of Works, Transport and Infrastructure Louis Moses Mendy has said that providing a bridge over the Banjul-Barra crossing point will involve a lot of funds.
PS Mandy said this while addressing Parliament’s Joint Committee on Monitoring the Implementation of Government Projects and Public Enterprises Committee (PEC).
According to him, government’s long term plan is to bridge the Banjul-Barra area but that will not be any time soon or now issue because it is costly.
He told the committee that so far only one Chinese Company was able to do the feasibility study and that was back in 2013. To have a full study on the area would not cost anything less than 50 to 100million dollars just the study.
Mendy reiterated that no investor will conduct the study if he doesn’t have the assurance of getting the contract. “The only leverage we can do as government is to look for goodwill people to conduct the study for us, so that once the feasibility study is done, we will now use that to lure in investors who will bridge Banjul-Barra,” he said.
He stressed that government has been receiving unsolicited proposals with regards to Banjul-Barra Bridge for many years.
He said a lot of individuals and companies expressed interest in building the Banjul-Barra Bridge.
He explains that the ECOWAS bloc has shown interest in doing the feasibility study due to the ECOWAS corridor, noting they want to link the bridge to the ECOWAS corridor.
“We are waiting for the results of the feasibility study from there, tenders will be open for interested groups depending on their financial muscle,” he stated.
“However, this is a major project for the country and the amount is very high, so if the work is not done properly we could find ourselves wanting and we don’t want that to happen.”
A member of the committee, Almamy Gibba said that as a country they should be very ready to inform the government in partnering with either ECOWAS or other government agencies.
“The fate of a country is decided by the people and we are the people. We are here to regulate a system and ECOWAS is of interest adding that is high for us as parliamentarians to take a decision,” Gibbaemphasized.
Another member of the committee, Tamsir Sarr addsthat no matter what government needs to act.
“We want a long term solution and that is the bridge,” he remarked.