Dear Mrs., Miss and Mr. at The Fatu Network,
I beg you to take note and publish the below statement. This letter is meant to be for the support of the Gambian people as it is of high importance that Gambia don’t sell out their values to foreign countries.
The Chinese fish factory at Gunjur and Kartong has been well described in numerous media, like Greenpeace, local newspapers, media within the EU etc.
The factory at Gunjur has been accused of and are responsible of pollution of the sea causing the death of thousands of fish which was washed ashore making the disaster visible.
There are more than 70 Chinese trawlers fishing in Gambian waters. Nobody is controlling them for license and/or what kind of catch they take on board. A short time ago Senegal control boats arrested 7 Chinese trawlers, who were fishing illegal in Senegal waters. It seems that Gambia do not have the means for controlling on high seas. Gambia’s territorial waters extends 200 nautical miles (about 370 kilometres) from the coast line and out into the sea.
But – sadly enough – the local Gambian and Senegalese fishermen are delivering fish to the Chinese factories. The Chinese pay better than the local consumers. Therefore the local fishermen is contributing to overfishing. For these boats it may happen that the fish is dead before reaching the factory and the fish will be thrown overboard. In other cases the factory may not be able to handle all the fish brought to them wherefore the fish is thrown away somewhere in the vicinity.
Gambia’s Fisheries Minister, James Gomez has now ordered that 10% of the catch must be for the local market. That means 90% still goes to the Chinese factories. This is just not good enough.
This is all very short sighted. After few years the fish will be gone and the Chinese will leave. Meanwhile the tourists have left long time earlier. Nobody can live in the odour of stinking fish. The tourist did not spend money only for sight-seeing etc., but coming to the Gambia many saw the difficulties of the people and started to collect money in their home countries in order to send the money to schools, hospitals or for education of single persons.
They even build hospitals and schools. Many containers of all kind of goods were shipped to Gambia and distributed by the same people to schools, hospitals etc. This was all done privately. This kind of a human helping hand will be gone.
President Adama Barrow has signed different agreements with China. Hopefully this will not end as for many other African nations, who was dealing with China – they were all raped.
Just at this moment an other Chinese fish factory is being build at the coast of Sanyang, just 10 kilometres north of Gunjur.
It can be expected that same things will happen on this place like the other places where the Chinese have build their factories. But this factory is not operational yet. There is time to stop this adverse development.
Here your newspaper come in. It must be anticipated that also politicians read newspapers.
Have enclosed a map positioning the new fishmeal factory at Sanyang and some pictures showing the beautiful beach which now probably soon will be destroyed.
With best regards Gunther Petersen, Denmark
