By Fatou B Cham
Information Officer, MoA
The Minister of Agriculture Amie Faburay, on Thursday 21st April 2022 embarked on a monitoring and visibility tour of project intervention sites under the purview of her Ministry, among which the Pirang drainage and Pirang-Faraba feeder road and the Pirang rice field are part of.
Ms. Faburay with delegation from the Central Project Coordinating Unit (CPCU), Directors from the various Departments, and the team from the Ministry of Agriculture, commenced a tour of the project intervention sites mainly in the West Coast (WCR), Lower River (LRR) and Central River Regions (CRR) respectively.
According to her, the Ministry of Agriculture does not only limit itself to crop and livestock production but goes beyond to build drainage for communities that are prone to floods. She emphasized the importance of the drainage system stressing that when it rains, most households in this community are affected by floods.
Ms. Faburay urged the contractors to fast-track the work before the rainy season so that the community will not be affected by the coming rains.
Tijan Sanneh, CPCU Engineer, explained that this is an infrastructural development that is geared towards protecting the community from floods adding that Pirang is a community prone to flooding.
“The idea of this drainage is to divert the water so that the community will not be affected by floods,” he asserted.
According to the engineer, the contract was signed in 2020 and the work is still ongoing because there were several challenges faced during the course of the work, due mainly to the Covid-19 pandemic and the demise of the project coordinator.
It is also noteworthy that the Government of the Gambia has ploughed the Pirang rice fields free of charge amongst many other rice fields in the country, to ease the burden on farmers.
