Hon. Sellu Bah, the National Assembly Member for Basse, has expressed disgust over what he termed as too many police and immigration check- points notably in the areas where roads are being constructed.

He opined that the sheer numbers of the check-points are causes of waste of precious time to the people using the roads. He lamented that ever so often the officers manning these not-far-apart posts would cause travelers to alight vehicles and make them to stay there for hours on end for very flimsy reasons, adding that the practice tends to unduly tamper with the rights of people to free movement.

Hon. Bah made these remarks on Tuesday at the National Assembly during a joint session of the Public Accounts Committee/ Public Enterprises Committee of the National Assembly.
On the re-export trade, Hon. Bah observed that the blame for the difficulties being encountered in the economic activity always tends to be put on the area councils and local authorities but he contended that the police and immigration authorities should be partly blamed for hampering the re-export trade.

Hon. Bah maintained that what the area councils charge for re-export trade vehicles is very minimal, noting that at times a truck is charged D10.00 but the problem starts when they reach police and immigration check points.
He therefore called on the Department of State for Finance and Economic Affairs to liaise with the Department of State for Interior to address the situation accordingly.

In digressing the Basse NAM drew the attention of the National Assembly to what he considered as misconduct on the part of certain security officers. “In the Saloum and Nianija area, what the paramilitary are doing to the people is totally unacceptable. Though they don’t do it to me, but what they do to others is making people to say a lot about the government of the day,” he said.

On the issue of job retention, Hon. Bah maintained that year in year out government spent a lot of money on training people but at the end of the day they ended up in the private sectors. “We must be bold enough to say that anybody that the government trains, you work for a specific period of time whereby you reimburse what government has spent on you.

Reacting to the concerns raised by Hon. Bah, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Hon. Fatoumatta Jahumpa-Ceesay buttressed the views of Hon. Bah, noting that the issues are so serious that the government should liaise with the Attorney-General’s Chambers and come up with what she called “ legal solution” and send it to the National Assembly. She stated that some people get trained by the government only to go forth to work for the private sector. “ This not fair to the tax payers. Some of the public servants are very unfair and ungrateful to the government of The Gambia,” she concluded.