Abdoulie G. Dibba
The Minister of Works, Transport, Construction and Infrastructure, Lamin Jobe, said that 80 percent of the country’s road network is
poor.
Mr. Jobe made this remark on Tuesday, 4 July 2017, while giving a preamble to the answers of the questions raised by National Assembly Members, regarding the poor road network in their respective constituencies.
The Minister of Works, Transport, Construction and Infrastructure stated that he would like to say briefly, what exist in the Gambia in terms of road network, before answering the questions of the NAMS.
He said he choose to do this because most of the questions raised by the National Assembly Members, are related to roads.
Minister Lamin Jobe told Deputies that roads are networked and if you fixed the one in Kantora and do not address the problem related to road in Tumana or Wuli, it does not make sense.
“In this country, we have 3,700 kilometres of roads in total. Whether they are paved, feeder or secondary roads, there are 3,700km of roads in this country” he said.
He stated that out of this, 800km or there about, are paved in the South Bank from Banjul to Basse, and in the North Bank from Barra to Sankulay Kunda.
“Those are the good ones but they constitute about only 20% of this 3,700 km of road. So this mean 80% of the roads in this country are not good,” he stated.
Minister Jobe pointed out that in fact when they looked at their performance in terms of road as a country, they are better than some countries in terms of coverage but compared to the African average, they are not better.
He said Africa has an average in terms of coverage of 50km for every 100km per space and we are 33km compared to 50km; that during the rains, even the 33km coverage is reduce to half.
Minister Jobe said it looks like for the last 50 years since the country become independent, the country only achieved in building the road from Banjul to Basse and Barra to Sankulay Kunda. “That’s a poor performance as far as road construction is concerned,” he stated.
“I am not impressed by this because this is a very small country with a population of less than two million people and the overall length of our roads is 3,700km,” Minister Jobe said.
He blamed that matters of road problems, have not been taken seriously in the country, despite a lot of interventions in the 70s and 80s.
