While Muslim around the world celebrate Eid, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Allah for the life and the opportunity to witness another Eid and I am wishing Eid Mubarak to all Gambians at home and abroad.
While wishing The president and the entire country a happy Eid, I would like to remind the President that The appointment of the Vice President is long Overdue, we are now over six months along the line and yet your cabinet is still incomplete, I call on you to look into this matter and do the right thing. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that keeping quiet on issues that require your attention and response is not helping at all. In addition to this, there are a few points that I will like to suggest for a progressive Gambia.
1. Establish a research and Development Center/Department that will be responsible for research on policy issues, this way our development policies will be backed by evidence base research that are feasible, otherwise we will be living in a vacuum, we will not have any sense of direction because we will only rely on research done else where. This research will affect policy change and will lead to development.
2. Established a monitoring and Evaluation department, this department will be responsible for tracking and tracing Government development projects and will be able to ascertain whether the projects have met their objective or not and can make cases on why they have not met their objective. If we only have the PAC/PEC committee of the national Assembly who only look at how Government money is utilize and do not verify where they are utilize, we will still be dreaming to be like Singapore. when we got our independent 3 months before them.
3. Invest in Human resource (Knowledge development)
Knowledge is the basis for any development and failure to invest in it, is plan to fail.
4. Reform the Agricultural sector-
Mr. President, The Ministry of Agriculture and its departments have more Phd holders than any of the Ministries, however the degrees only stop at the meetings, conferences and workshops, they do not apply at the rice fields, farms.
The Gambia was more food sufficient when we did not have Phd holders or had very minimal number of them, but now with the number of Phd holders, an average family that grows rice cannot sustain the family for 3 months. look into this matter
Mr. President these are my humble suggestions and I am putting it forward to you for your consideration. These are some of the key issues I will look at, if I become President in near future (INSHAALLAH).
Yours in National Development
Mr. Lamin Sonko
Youth Activist / Advocate
