By Louise Jobe
The Director of Administration and Public Relation Officer of the Brikama Area Council, Ebrima Sawaneh, on Thursday said the council will invite the youth-led group called ‘occupyBAC’ for a dialogue to look into their demands.
The group that identified itself as ‘occupy BAC’ demanded for better social service to the people of their region such as good roads, standard market facilities, proper waste collection system, good drainage amenities and proper utilization of the council rates and taxes for the development of the region.
The protest, according to the demonstrators, was prearranged to manifest their dissatisfaction over what they called the poor management of the Brikama Area Council. They said the Council has failed to provide the area with good roads, standard markets and garbage collection system. In addition, the protesters said the people of the Region pay rates to council and yet they do not realize the benefit of being tax compliant. They also said the region has a poor drainage system as well. According to the protesters, the authorities are not sensitive to the plight of vendors.
PRO Sawaneh told Foroyaa the council will invite the demonstrators for a dialogue in which some of the things stated in their petition as concerned youths of the West Coast Region, would be clarified by the council management. He added they would tell the youths the limits of the council and its responsibilities because some of the demands are not within their mandate as a council.
“We have received their petition and we have looked at it, in fact, we are going to invite them and tell them that the demands written on their document such as good roads, electricity among others are not the responsibilities of the council; perhaps they do not understand that some of those things do not lie on the area councils,” the BAC PRO said.
He said he did not blame them maybe they do not know what the responsibilities and functions of the council are.
“Some of the things stated in their demand are not the council’s duties,” he said.
He added the CEO of the council is going to invite them and tell them what is the responsibilities of the Brikama Area Council are.
He said the council is currently facing difficulties in terms of provision of some social services to the people of the Region because taxes levied on sand mining, car park fee, cattle tax and billboard fee are collected by the Central Government and the National Revenue Authority respectively.
