By Arret Jatta
The Chief Executive Officer of the OIC Secretariat Mr Yankuba Dibba has announced that the OIC Summit is not open to the public as it is an international governmental meeting for the 57 member states of the OIC.
He disclosed this at a press briefing which was hosted by the Ministry of Information on Monday 29th April in Kanifing at the GRTS complex.
“The OIC international is organizing it and the Gambia is hosting it as part of the 57 member states, I’m stressing this point because a lot of people think this is an open kind of meeting where you give out invitations, this is not open to the public it is an international governmental meeting which is only dedicated to the government agencies and not even all the government agencies,” Dibba said. “However as host country we might accommodate a few invitations for the opening ceremony but throughout the six days, it’s business”.
He clarified the rumor that some of their guests will be lodging outside the country, “even if we are to receive 5000 guests in this country we can comfortably house them even without the five star hotel, we can’t even utilize all the space we have here so I want this to be very clear, we have adequate space here”.
He however stated that the only issue they have is the parking of aircrafts as the Gambia’s airport cannot handle more than 15 aircrafts at the moment so that being the case some aircrafts will land in Senegal.
He added that there are 400 vehicles parked at the GCCI trade fair center, “Gambia Government has bought 100 brand new SUVs and Mercedes Benz that is enough to cater for all our heads of states, in addition, a friendly country has also given us a hundred vehicles they’re all packed at the GCCI trade fair ground, thirdly the Gambia Government has given us over a D100 million to rent vehicles so we do not have any shortage as far as transportation is concerned”.
He further assured the general public that the Gambia is “100 percent prepared to host the OIC summit”.
