By Sarjo M Camara, Information Officer, Office of the Vice President
Dr Isatou Touray, the Vice President of the Republic of The Gambia on Wednesday, August 25th received two cheques amounting to five hundred thousand Dalasi for onward transmission to National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) and the Gambia Red Cross Society (GRCS), as humanitarian support to the needy and the vulnerable, including the windstorm victims.
Ministers of Information and Communication Infrastructure, Ebriama Sillah; Basic and Secondary Education, Claudiana Cole; and Gender, Children and Social Welfare, Fatou Sanyang Kinteh attended the handing over ceremony.
On receiving the donation on behalf of the President, Vice President Touray said the donation is for victims in the North Bank and West Coast regions, two regions identified as hardest-hit regions by the July 7th windstorm disaster.
The deadly windstorm that swept the country in the night of July 7is reported to have claimed the lives of at least 11 people and affected 82,124 people from 978 households.
Further in her remarks, the Vice President revealed that government has increased its allocation to hundred and thirty-nine million dalasi, as emergency response to disasters. She hailed the contribution of the insurance association, describing it as timely. She also used the occasion to recognise and underscore the laudable efforts of WFP, MOH, GRCS, who distributed 30 metric tons of rice to four thousand and eight hundred people from six hundred households that suffered food loss as a result of the disaster.
She went on to call on other philanthropists, private sector and development partners to follow suit.
The benefactors are the Insurance Association of the Gambia (IAG) led by Makaireh Badjan and accompanied by Molufa Sanneh, the Secretary General of the said Association. The benefactors said the donation is meant to complement government and partners’ recovery efforts for the victims affected by the storm surge of 7th of July 2021, which saw loss of lives and damages to properties and critical infrastructure.
Isatou M. Bah, a representative of GRCS, thanked the donors for their foresight, noting that this will help their efforts to extend assistance to affected families.
The presentation was chaired by the PS Dawda L Ceesay, who also acknowledged the efforts of the benefactors as timely.
