Gambia-L:
The e-mail below came from a source in the Gambia, and I am sending it as
received because of limited access to the Net.
Ebrima
_______________________________________________________________
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Jammeh's empty classroom blocks inhabited by goats and sheep says
>Sir Dawda
>
>
>Ebrima,
>The former President has been away from his native land for over six years
>but he is certainly abreast of developments in the Gambia. The Education
>sector is indeed in a total state of flux. Education planning, as we know
>it, cease to exist immediately following the coup in July 1994. The school
>mapping exercise, which cost the government a bundle and generated wealth
>of data to help the education planners identify where school facilities
>were needed the most, was abandoned to accomodate the wishes of the new
>military government. In the name of attaining cheap popularity, the
>planning exercise was abandoned to be substituted by the wishes of the new
>military boys led by the ill-educated Yahya. The catchment areas identified
>during the school mapping exercise where ignored and the 22July Projects
>co-ordinating Committee led by Yankuba Touray took charge of identifying
>where the educational facilities where most needed. Of course, they went
>for areas in the Foni's and in other areas where the APRC needed additional
>votes. To help them suppliment the AFPRC funds dubiously raised from
>Taipei, they cajolled SSHFC, GAMTEL, NAWEC and GPA into building schools in
>the Foni's and in other areas where there were few school going age kids.
>To the AFRPC and subsequently the APRC (the same thing), it didn't matter
>whether there were enough children in the catcment area or whether there
>were enough teachers and school material for these facilities, and more
>importantly whether government could meet the recurrent cost of running
>these schools. What mattered was the edifices to go up so that people could
>see that the AFRPC was doing the job. Unfortunately, the strategy worked
>for a while because people started saying how well the AFPRC was doing etc.
>etc. Even up to this moment, some Gambians still cite the schools and
>health facilities built under the present regime. The sad fact is that a
>majority of these facilities are either redundant(because similar
>facilities already exists within the catchment area), ill-constructed
>(contracted without tendering the works and Yahya and Yankuba pocketing the
>balance) or both. The Bwiam and Farafenni Hospitals, International Airport
>and tens of schools are cases in point. Bwiam is incomplete because
>"Allah's Bank" has apparently run out of money, thanks to the US Government
>telling Taipei to stop aggravating the conditions of the ordinary Gambian.
>Farafenni is so ill-designed that you have to see it to believe it. Pierre
>Gujabi is not a health facilities architech. He designed the Airport, the
>Arch 22, Farafenni Hospital and some concepts design for a Conference
>centre and then took his "cut" and ran away. During the Transition, they
>called it the MFDC solidarity shuffle; a cut for Yahya, a cut for Yankuba,
>a cut for Amadou Samba, a cut for Pierre Gujabi and a percentage for the
>FMDC solidarity fund.
>I am afraid Sir Dawda is right when he says that sheeps and goats take
>shelter in some of these schools because they are built so far away from
>the center of the catchment areas where there are hardly any school going
>kids. As for the much-touted Airport, it leaks when it rains. Infact, as I
>write this piece, the terminal building of the airport is leaking seriously
>after unusually heavy rains. It is poorly designed and don't be surprised
>if you are told a year or two from now that the entire building is
>structurally unsafe for passengers. It is sad to see some Gambians still
>citing the Terminal building as an achievement of the Jammeh regime. As far
>as I am concerned, it is the biggest rip-off of the Jammeh regime.
>
>
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
