Fatou Camara II

Coronavirus patients at Bambo Hotel have alleged they were asked to pack and be moved to a different hotel because President Adama Barrow is visiting the area.

“This morning we are told to move to Lemon Creek because Barrow is visiting the area. That all of us should pack up and that they are told to move us to Lemon Creek,” one patient told The Fatu Network.

“We think that its grossly unfair because we are not here for free, we have paid for it, we are tested positive for a virus that spread like God knows how. People tested positive and now you want to put them in a vehicle and start transporting them and even just moving them is risky.

“Nobody seems to care about us. We are just dumped here and forgotten, no medication nothing, no monitoring nothing . This is the situation here so I thought it’s fair to let Gambians know about what is going on here.

“If President Barrow is supposed to have a meeting here, it is not our concern we are not supposed to go anywhere because under quarantine you dont go out. So if Barrow is going to have a meeting somewhere here it is not our business,” the patient said. Another patient confirmed the development.

The Fatu Network contacted Dr Abubacarr Jagne of the health ministry who dismissed the complaints coming from the patients in the centre .

“We don’t have staff for all the multiple centres to look after people at the same time. So we prefer to put them in one centre and apparently Lemon Creek has agreed to that service.

“They have 54 rooms that are ready to accommodate our staff. The reason is I’ve got lot of problems with Bambo and his management for patients and their care and that is the reason we have to look for an alternative so we have no intention or nothing to do with the president or wherever he is travelling. I am not aware even where the President is going to. Am not sure that would be my motivation to move them from there,” Dr Jagne said.

The ministry of trade has said the coronavirus pandemic has caused a reduction in the supply of rice and other food commodities causing a rise in prices along the way.

“These increments are caused by both the exogenous and some local factors,” the trade ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Findings by The Fatu Network have shown how prices for food commodities have jumped sharply in recent weeks. There is shortage of chicken leg in the country and the trade ministry is saying there is a price increase for the product by up to 18%.

The trade ministry said: “Exogenously, the general increase in the prices particularly for rice and edible oil is a global phenomenon as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These products are mainly from South East Asia such as China, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand, some of whom have import export restrictions. This has resulted to reduced supply of these aforementioned commodities and thus the resultant price increase.”

According to the trade ministry, recent months have also seen a price increase in the global container market from an average of $2,000 per 40ft container to up to $9,000 from Asia to Europe as of January 18.

As a result, the shipping lines operating in The Gambia have increased the freight cost to Banjul since November 2020 from $5,000 to $11,000 per 40ft container, according to the trade ministry.

By AFP

The coronavirus pandemic took a huge toll on global jobs last year, the United Nations said Monday, with the equivalent of more than a quarter of a billion lost.

In a fresh study, the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) found that a full 8.8 percent of global working hours were lost in 2020, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.

That is equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs, or “approximately four times greater than the number lost during the 2009 global financial crisis,” the ILO said in a statement.

“This has been the most severe crisis for the world of work since the Great Depression of the 1930s,” ILO chief Guy Ryder told reporters in a virtual briefing.

Since surfacing in China just over a year ago, the virus has killed more than 2.1 million people, infected tens of millions of others and hammered the global economy.

The UN labour agency explained that around half of the lost working hours were calculated from reduced working hours for those remaining in employment.

But the world also saw “unprecedented levels of employment loss” last year, it said.

Official global unemployment shot up by 1.1 percent, or 33 million more people, to a total of 220 million and a worldwide jobless rate of 6.5 percent last year.

Ryder stressed that another 81 million people did not register as unemployed but “simply dropped out of the labour market”.

“Either they are unable to work perhaps because of pandemic restrictions or social obligations or they have given up looking for work,” he said.

“And so their talents, their skills, their energy have been lost, lost to their families, lost to our society, lost to us all.”

The lost working hours last year shrank global labour income by a full 8.3 percent, the ILO said.

That amounts to a drop of some $3.7 trillion, or 4.4 percent of overall global gross domestic product (GDP), it added.

The emergence of several safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 has raised hopes that the world will soon be able to rein in the pandemic.

But the ILO cautioned that the prospects for a global labour market recovery this year are “slow, uneven and uncertain.”

The organization pointed to the uneven impact the crisis had had on the world’s workers, affecting women and younger workers far more than others.

Globally, employment losses for women last year stood at five percent, compared with 3.9 percent for men.

Women are more likely to work in the harder-hit sectors of the economy, and also have taken on more of the burden of, for instance, caring for children forced to stay home from school.

Younger workers were also far more likely to lose jobs, with employment loss among 15-24-year-olds at 8.7 percent globally, compared with 3.7 percent for older workers.

Many young people also put off trying to enter the labour market given the complicated conditions last year, the ILO found, warning that there was truly an “all too real risk of a lost generation”.

Monday’s report also highlighted the uneven impact on different sectors, with accommodation and food services the worst affected, showing a drop in employment of more than 20 percent.

By contrast, employment swelled in the information and communication fields, as well as in finance and insurance.

Looking forward, the ILO called on countries to provide particular support to the hardest-hit groups and sectors, and also to sectors likely to be able to generate numerous jobs quickly.

It stressed the need for more support to poorer countries with fewer resources to promote employment recovery.

The report sketched out three recovery scenarios for 2021, depending on support measures provided at the national and international level.

The pessimistic scenario saw an additional 4.6-percent drop in working hours, and even the most optimistic scenario anticipated that working hours would contract by a further 1.3 percent this year, corresponding to 36 million full-time jobs.

Three people who have tested positive for coronavirus and receiving treatment are currently on oxygen therapy, the ministry of health has said.

The ministry of health in its latest report released on Monday said 36 new cases of coronavirus, pointing to a slow return of the disease.

Nearly 1000 people were tested of which 36 people including 28 men and eight women tested positive for the virus.

According to the health ministry, while 19 new patients got discharged from treatment centres, three COVID-19 patients are currently on oxygen therapy.

Claims businessman Abubacarr Jawara met President Adama Barrow alongside wanted Banta Keita have been slammed as false.

A photo of Jawara and a man meeting with President Adama Barrow is being shared on social media with wild claims the man is Banta Keita.

However, sources close to the Jawara family have told The Fatu Network the man is Kisima Jawara. Kisima is an uncle to Abubacarr.

One person close to the Jawaras said: “It’s false. It’s unfortunate people can descend so low. He is not Banta Keita but Kisima Jawara who is an uncle to Abubacarra Jawara and the proprietor of Sen Fast Food.

“Some people in this country in their senseless dislike of Abubacarr are ready to go to any length to link him with Banta and by extension the government.”

The ministry of health has said 36 new cases of coronavirus have been registered bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases ever confirmed in the country to 4,008.

According to the ministry on Monday, of the 36, eight of the cases was confirmed on January 22 while 22 and six were confirmed on January 23 and January 24 respectively.

Those who tested positive include 28 men and eight women according the ministry, with their ages ranging between 19 and 64 years.

Nine out of the 36 cases were mandatorily tested for travelling into the country from hotspot countries of the new coronavirus strain, the health ministry said.

By Ousman Jatta

The ban on the importation of chicken products from Senegal is having a rippling effect on the price of chicken in the country, findings by The Fatu Network show.

Chicken is one of the most highly consumed livestock products in the country by most Gambian families but it’s now becoming more expensive to purchase.

According to Modou Jabai a retailer, there is a shortage of chicken in the market and because of that the price of chicken has gone up.

“The ban has led to a shortage of chicken in the country. For that reason, we now sell a kilo of chicken legs for 130, while in the past a kilo of chicken cost for only D90,” he says.

The outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu in Senegal has caused the death of thousands of chicken in that country and has seen the ministry of agriculture through the department of livestock services and the ministry of health as well as the National Disaster Management agency recently hold a news conference where they laid out government’s preparedness in ensuring the disease doesn’t get into the country.

UDP’s Ebrima Dibba has reacted to claims he duped a Saudi woman thousands of Saudi riyals while working at the Gambian Embassy in Saudi Arabia.

Documents claiming Dibba took money of over 60,000 Saudi riyals from a money and refused to pay the money back was circulated online by NPP supporters.

But reacting to the claims, Dibba said, in an audio obtained by The Fatu Network: “The person who can silence me has not been born yet in this country. This plan has collapsed.

“Anyone who knows something would know that letter is forged. It’s a fraudulent letter. Why haven’t they put a letterhead on that letter? There is no letterhead and the date they put October 5, 2019 found me on a European tour with the party leader Alhagie Ousainou Darboe.

“The telephone number they put and they said when I was in Saudi Arabia I took that money but if that’s the case I didn’t have that telephone number yet. October 2019 had found me already sacked from work in Saudi.”

The authority of ECOWAS heads of state has called on political stakeholders in the country to find a common understanding over the draft constitution.

The draft constitution is in distress following its failure at the national assembly last year when loyalist President Barrow MPs voted against it. The MPs insist the charter was badly drafted.

ECOWAS leaders met on Saturday for their 58th ordinary session and a statement said the authority of the leaders “takes note of the political divergencies in the country regarding the revision of the Constitution as the country prepares for presidential and legislative elections at the end of 2021”.

“It commends H.E. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, for agreeing to facilitate dialogue among national political stakeholders on the contentious issues surrounding the draft Constitution, which is due to be put to a referendum in June 2021 before the presidential elections in December 2021.

“The Authority welcomes the progress made and calls on all political stakeholders in The Gambia to build consensus on the draft Constitution. It calls on the relevant authorities to maintain dialogue for the adoption of the Constitution and the compliance with the electoral calendar,” the leaders said in their joint statement.

TRRC chairman Dr Lamin J Sise said today hearing about the National Intelligence Agency has shown agents weren’t the innocent and ignorant enablers of the dictatorship as some portrayed themselves to be.

The probe has in recent weeks cast attention to the NIA, used by former President Yahya Jammeh to violate and abuse the rights of innocent Gambians. At least six people who worked with the agency pleaded guilty to torturing Gambians at the NIA, sometimes with the help of the junglers.

TRRC boss Dr Sise today said they were “wicked torturers who willingly brutalized innocent Gambians for money or favour”.

“Some perpetrators gave flimsy excuses that if they did not carry out the superior orders to torture a detainee, they would themselves be tortured. They claimed that they had no choice.

“But of course they have a duty not to implement unlawful orders and no amount of explanation can excuse the cruel and inhumane treatment they inflicted on their victims,” Dr Sise said.

President Joe Biden on Monday will formally reinstate COVID-19 travel restrictions on non-U.S. travelers from Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 other European countries that allow travel across open borders, according to two White House officials.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, also confirmed Sunday that South Africa would be added to the restricted list because of concerns about a variant of the virus that has spread beyond that nation.

Biden is reversing an order from President Donald Trump in his final days in office that called for the relaxation of the travel restrictions as of Tuesday.

The decision to reverse the order is not surprising, but the addition of South Africa to the restricted travel list highlights the new administration’s concern about mutations in the virus.

The South Africa variant has not been discovered in the United States, but another variant — originating in the United Kingdom — has been detected in several states.

Reuters was first to report Biden’s decision to add South Africa to the list.

Biden last week issued an executive order directing federal agencies to require international air travelers to quarantine upon U.S. arrival. The order also requires that all U.S.-bound passengers ages 2 and above get negative COVID-19 test results within three days before traveling. (AP)

Four ECOWAS nations have agreed to send police units to The Gambia once ECOMIG gets transformed into a police mission.

ECOWAS heads of state and government held their 58th ordinary session on Saturday where they decided to extend the mandate of ECOMIG for a period of twelve (12) months from 1 January 2021 and “transform it into a Police Mission after December 2021 elections”.

“It [ECOWAS authority] expresses its gratitude to Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal and Togo for agreeing to contribute Constituted Police Units to ECOMIG, and the European Union for its financial and technical support,” a statement said.

The decision to transform ECOMIG into a police mission was first made last year when ECOWAS leaders met in Niamey, Niger.

Madi Jobarteh has carpeted President Adama Barrow over Ecowas’s decision to extend ECOMIG’s stay in The Gambia to December 2021 and transform the force into a police mission beyond 2021.

ECOWAS leaders including President Barrow converged over the weekend for their 58th ordinary session where the decision was reached.

But according to Madi Jobarteh, the decision undermijnes national unity and national security.

He said: “I hereby state my total and complete opposition to this decision by ECOWAS. I hereby condemn Pres. Adama Barrow for agreeing to such a terrible decision that undermines national security and national unity.

“The Gambia has a national police already and they are enough to ensure law and order. All they need is the right support from the President with effective leadership from the IGP and the Minister of Interior.”

The Gambia’s top Afro-Manding rapper, ST, has come out to address the issue of domestic violence, while calling on men to treat women with love and affection.

The Brikama-born musician made the urge during an appearance on The Sisters Sisters Show. His words: “Marriage is complicated and sometimes it’s hard to understand what actually happened. People tell stories; a whole lot of things are said and stuff like that. But I would like to tell everybody women are like gold and they should be treated like gold. I want to tell all the men out there to support women and actually be behind them because women deserve our support.

“Women should be respected and supported. Both men and women were created by Allah and we supposed to support them. I hereby declare to everyone I’m totally behind women in any way I can as an artist and as an individual.”

A host on The Sisters Show Dr Jay, who is a medical doctor in the US, assessed: “Thank you so much ST. That’s really important. I can feel the emotion. What you are saying is from your soul and I really adore that.”

Former president Donald Trump threw himself back into politics this weekend by publicly endorsing a devoted and divisive acolyte in Arizona who has embraced his false election conspiracy theories and entertained the creation of a new “MAGA Party.”

In a recorded phone call, Trump offered his “complete and total endorsement” for another term for Arizona state party chairwoman Kelli Ward, a lightning rod who has sparred with the state’s Republican governor, been condemned by the business community and overseen a recent flight in party registrations. She narrowly won reelection, by a margin of 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent, marking Trump’s first victory in a promised battle to maintain political relevance and influence after losing the 2020 election.

In recent weeks, Trump has entertained the idea of creating a third party, called the Patriot Party, and instructed his aides to prepare election challenges to lawmakers who crossed him in the final weeks in office, including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), according to people familiar with the plans.

Multiple people in Trump’s orbit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, say Trump has told people that the third-party threat gives him leverage to prevent Republican senators from voting to convict him during the Senate impeachment trial. Trump advisers also say they plan to recruit opposing primary candidates and commission polling next week in districts of targeted lawmakers. Trump has more than $70 million in campaign cash banked to fund his political efforts, these people say. (Apple News)