By Ramatoulie Jawo
The Minister of Works, Transports, and Infrastructure, Hon Ebrima Sillah visited the Hakalang road Nuimi on day 3 of his ongoing familiarisation tour of the gov’t projects underway.
Speaking, Minister Sillah urged the chiefs and alkalolou to encourage their youth to join the contractors to work because human resources are very limited.
He encouraged the youth willing to learn skills like road and other construction skills to join the contractors in the ongoing works.
“They are paying good money. So I encourage all the youth around that end to join them because some contractors travelled all the way to Senegal and other neighbouring countries to get young people who can do the skills, which is not encouraging,” he added.
Momodou Senghore, Managing Director, National Roads Authority (NRA) told the delegation that his office would always ensure that quality is never compromised.
“Our staff are here on the ground to ensure that work is done as it should be done,” he said and called on the contractor as well as the consultant to redouble their efforts to finish the work on time.
Vincent De Paul Atanga, Resident Engineer for the Nuimi – Hakalang road project gave a presentation of the entire work by highlighting some progresses registered as well as the challenges they are facing.
He said the road from Buniadou to Kuntaya is 55km and 12km has been completed already and assured that his team would complete the rest of the work within schedule.
Chatty Cham, chief of Lower Nuimi said they can’t thank the government of the Gambia enough for taking the responsibility to construct the Hakalag road.
“Some of those roads have been there since colonial days and they have never been rehabilitated, which was giving them a lot of challenges to move from one destination to another. When completed, it would impact positively on the lives of the people of Upper River Region because the movement of goods and services will not be a problem anymore,” he said.
Alpha Mariam Khan, chiefs of Jokado appealed to the contractors to complete the Kuntaya road before the start of the rainy season because residents in the area face many difficulties when accessing certain facilities.
“Regarding the ongoing works, we also sometimes need first-hand information from the contractors. So that we can have some information to share with our community members because the people always ask us how far is the work going and we sometimes don’t have answers for them which does not tell well,” he said.
He further asked the minister to help them rehabilitate some of the feeder roads in his district to ease movement of people as well as goods and service for socio-economic development.
Sillah is accompanied by officials from the Ministries of Transport, contractors and consultants together with other relevant stakeholders on the ongoing 5-day familiarisation tour of ongoing Gov’t project nationwide.
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