Brufut 'Diaspora' Protest to Jammeh
The Independent (Banjul)
DOCUMENT
July 19, 2002
Posted to the web July 19, 2002
By Pk Jarju
Banjul
The standoff between the villagers of Brufut and Taf Construction Company
over land has excited overseas attention from the Brufut 'diaspora' who are
protesting to Jammeh over what they called the injustice of usurping land,
which ancestrally belongs to them, but which was being put at the disposal
of self-serving entrepreneurs.
Brufutians in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and North America have
protested to the President, calling on him to intervene by ordering a halt
to Taf Construction Company projects in the social interest and political
stability of the village.
>We reproduce below their protest.
We the people of Brufut in the United Kingdom, Western Europe and North
America are compelled to bring to your attention the land problems between
our people back home, TAF Construction and your Government.
During your Presidential campaign in Brufut, you promised our People that
the land belongs to them, which we appreciated and thought that you would
stick to for the interest of peace and stability in our community.
Your Excellency, we are disheartened with the current news we received
regarding the land issue. TAF at the moment announced over the local media
that it would in collaboration with the Department of Physical Planning and
Housing to carry out a demolition exercise over an area in Brufut that they
said is supposed to be a state land. What is state land and who is the state
anyway? With the greatest respect, Your Excellency the state is no more, no
less than the people of this country. In this case it is our people in
Brufut who own the land. Our people in Brufut have lost part of their land
to the Brusubi Housing Development Project, Department of Parks and Wild
Life. And after endless promises made, Brusubi has brought neither
electricity nor water not to mention telephones to Brufut.
The planned demolition exercise is merely an attempt to clear the ground for
the benefit and interest of "TAF construction". Our people have rejected
TAF's Proposal and offer of compensation.
Your Excellency, it seems the present policies of your Government on the
matter would rather defend the corporate interest of TAF than care about the
thousands of landless youths and the poor in Brufut. If this so-called state
land is allocated to TAF, then you have to know that it is done without the
consent of our people and without disclosing the true facts on the ground to
you and your cabinet. The Department of State for Local Government and Lands
ignored or pretended that there were no developments on the ground affecting
the area. Why should our people in Brufut not be allowed to build and live
on the land that our forefathers have ploughed and tendered for centuries?
If this land in Brufut is allocated to TAF, our youths in Brufut will have
no land to build and live on whilst our people will not be able to afford
the proposed High Class residential houses of TAF.
Your Excellency this will lead to affluence in the midst of poverty in
Brufut. The Policy of conceding our entire coastline to foreigners in the
name of the Tourism Development Area (TDA) has lost credibility although
Tourism is good for development but are Gambians not good enough to live on
the best parts of their own land? Ordinary Gambians should have the option
of being able to live near the beach and so should the people of Brufut.
Your Excellency the land administration in our country is in disarray
because our so-called officials are self-serving. After the debacle of
"Sinchu Yahi" the Department of State for Local Government and Lands is
still determined to give more land to TAF Construction. TAF's project in New
Yundum is at the expense of ordinary landowners some of whom still remain
uncompensated. We the people of Brufut do not want the proposed high-class
residential homes for we are happy with our mud houses that we have been
living on for centuries. On purely economic point, why should the government
subsidize a private individual in the person of TAF Construction for the
so-called development project? Should TAF not buy rather than be "allocated"
the land he wants for his projects? No matter how TAF's Projects are dressed
up; it remains purely a money-making enterprise from an entrepreneur and as
such TAF Should be buying the lands he needs at market prices either from
individual owners or from the state.
Your Excellency, it seems to us that rich and powerful people in the country
only have to point out the sites (land) they want and it is allocated to
them whilst Ordinary Gambians have to wait for years for state layouts and
even then, only persons with influential friends are allocated plots.
Your Excellency, in the interest of social and political stability in
Brufut, we the Brufut community in the diaspora respectfully urge your
Government to order a stop to the propose project in order to bring sanity.
Respectfully,
Signed on behalf of the Brufut community in the diaspora: - Abdou Karim
Sanneh, Manchester UK Dave Manneh, Southampton UK Kutubo Manneh, Saudi
Arabia Ismaila Bojang, Atlanta USA
There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see,
yet small enough to solve. -Mike- Levitt-
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