The Kanifing Municipal Council (KMC), Gambia’s biggest council, has refuted allegations that the council is currently in serious financial crisis.

Pa Kalipha Sanyang, KMC’s Public Relations Officer, maintained that this is never the condition as purported when this paper went to the council yesterday to take in the council’s side of the story over allegations that the council is really in serious financial crisis.

Recent reports have it that the Kanifing Municipal Council is currently facing serious financial crisis, the state of affairs which reassuringly illustrates the sustenance of what many describe as the gloomiest days of the council, as well as bring about a crisis of confidence in KMC.

Sources said the municipality has to turn to the banks for overdraft to be able to pay last month’s salaries.

“Even the tractors can no longer go around to collect garbage as usual because the municipality cannot foot the bill of fuel for them,” the sources said.

According to PRO Sanyang, during this time of the year (lean period) the council receives not much money.

He explained that the peak period, a time when the council usually collects much, runs from January to July. He noted that usually towards the last quota of the financial year, the cash flow goes down naturally.

“The council however remains as solid as ever and we are living up to expectations both in terms of service delivery and overhead expenditures. Never in the history of this council was an overdraft obtained to pay salaries. We had paid salaries as early as the 25th of this month and the tractors are busily serving their purpose.

He revealed that the council is owed well over D70, 000, 000.00 (seventy million) in arrears, which he maintained is negatively impacting on the operations of the council.

There have been rumours and speculation in recent times that there is an Alkaloship crisis in the village of Tanjeh in Kombo South. This reporter has visited the area in an effort to get the facts and shed light on the subject.

Speaking to The Point at his residence in Tanjeh the Alkalo, Cherno Bojang, alias Alikali Bojang, said that the story was true and factual. He said that recently a Senegalese national called Momodou Manneh had been claiming that he was the Alkalo of a certain community in Tanjeh.

According to the Alkalo, the matter was settled finally as some security personnel came to the scene to intervene. He added that since the formation of Tanjeh as a community his family and clan are entitled to and have held the Alkaloship. He told The Point that he is the 8th Alkalo of Tanjeh since its formation.

Speaking about the development of Tanjeh, Mr. Bojang said that there is a serious need for a health centre in the village as the women are suffering a lot when they are in labour. He also spoke about the poor roads in the village along with the good drinking water.

He said that Tanjeh has a population of over 15,000 people and all of them cannot be supplied by a 60,000-litre water tank. “This is affecting our community negatively, especially those living on the outskirts,” he stated.

He also mentioned the need for a proper market in the village.

While thanking the government for the concern for Gambian development he appealed to them and philanthropists to help Tanjeh with the difficulties being faced by the people.

Drought, conflict, hyperinflation, high food and fuel prices, the weakness of the Somali shilling and a succession of poor harvests have increased the number of people needing food and other assistance to 2.6 million – up 40 percent from January.

At a news conference in Nairobi on 22 July, Mark Bowden, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, called the situation “fluid” and warned that “we are months before a major crisis” as the situation was likely to deteriorate further, potentially affecting 3.5 million, or half the total population.

Bowden said that “although this is a frightening figure to deal with”, it was the responsibility of the humanitarian community to provide assistance and seek ways to address the crisis.

Already, UN agencies and NGO partners of the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) had revised upwards the financial requirements from the original US$406 million to $637 million, an increase of 53 percent, in their mid-year review. Financing the CAP would be a challenge as the global price rises had increased costs and affected donor governments’ budgets too.

In Somalia, the critical food and livelihood crisis, combined with price hikes, very poor rains in the southern and central parts of the country, violence and limited or no access to the affected populations, was further exacerbating the situation and severely restricting the ability of humanitarian organisations to deliver assistance.

At the press conference, Beatrice Spadacini, media and communications manager for CARE International, said access was the greatest challenge facing humanitarian organisations.

She said in many parts of the country, particularly the central and southern regions, aid workers were increasingly being targeted. At least 19 UN and NGO aid workers have been killed and 13 others abducted since the start of 2008 and 31 piracy cases reported, in addition to 82 looting incidents.

Per Engebak, the director for the UN Children's Fund in eastern and southern Africa, said on average, it took 47 days to cover 200km, bypassing 400 checkpoints to deliver assistance to the vulnerable population,.

Peter Smerdon, a senior public affairs officer for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said: “WFP needs to double the amount of food it is bringing into Somalia to 32,000MT per month.” The agency was urgently appealing to governments to escort naval vessels to protect ships loaded with WFP food from piracy. At least 90 percent of all WFP food for Somalia arrives by sea.

Smerdon said the first unescorted ship loaded with WFP food was due to leave Mombasa on 22 July. Another ship had refused to load 12,000MT of cereals in South Africa without naval support, he added, and if this cargo did not leave South Africa soon for Mogadishu, one million people in Somalia would not receive cereals - the bulk of the food ration - in August.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Crop Prospects and Food Situation report released in July forecasts that the main Gu cereal crop, due for harvest from next month, is largely expected to fail as a result of a late start and poor rains in most parts of the country. According to the FAO’s Food Security Analysis Unit, if the Gu rains fail, the Somali shilling continues to fall, food prices continue to increase and civil insecurity worsens, potentially half the total population could face a humanitarian emergency or acute food and livelihoods crisis.

IRIN 

Worsening malnutrition and the threat of disease outbreaks are compounding Ethiopia's humanitarian crisis. WHO is working with the Government of Ethiopia and health partners to support the 4.6 million people needing urgent emergency food relief nationwide.

The number of people who need food assistance is increasing noticeably in Ethiopia. Health risks are being compounded by the global food security crisis, the impact of drought on agricultural production and the country's weak health system. During the coming months, annual rains are expected to again cause large-scale flooding, increasing loss of crops and risk of disease.

"In humanitarian terms, the situation is unacceptable," said Dr Eric Laroche, Assistant Director-General for WHO's Health Action in Crises. "The health of millions of Ethiopians is worsening by the day, and the international community must act to support the country's government to ease this terrible suffering."

Growing demand for feeding centres

In three regions alone (Somali, SNNP and Eastern Oromiya), the number of government-run feeding centres has risen from 200 three months ago to 605 today. Some 75 000 children aged under 5 need therapeutic and supplementary nutrition support. WHO, UNICEF and nongovernmental organizations are supporting these centres.

Additional major factors affecting people’s health and livelihoods are a lack of access to safe drinking water, shortages of drugs and medical supplies and insufficient human resources. The areas affected by shortages are also at significant risk of disease outbreaks: diarrhoeal diseases, measles and meningitis. Cases of acute watery diarrhoea have been reported in 16 districts, and outbreaks of cerebrospinal meningitis in 37 districts. More than 7000 cases of measles have been registered in 38 districts.

WHO is working with Federal and regional government partners, UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations to:

• provide better health and nutrition services throughout Ethiopia using emergency mobile teams;
• deploy drugs, medical and nutrition supplies and staff for emergency action;
• plan the rolling out of outpatient therapeutic programmes; and
• strengthen disease and nutritional surveillance systems to enable rapid response.
WHO's response efforts include:
• strengthening disease and nutritional surveillance, particularly for severe acute malnutrition;
• preventing measles via immunization activities, including vaccinations and vitamin A supplementation;
• training and support for health staff and strengthening systems to address health needs;
• promoting water treatment, hygiene and sanitation interventions to stop the spread of acute watery diarrhoea and other communicable diseases; and
• providing urgently needed drugs and medical supplies to support health services and therapeutic feeding programmes.

WHO

It is excellent to see that President Jammeh and his government are taking the world food crisis seriously. Just recently the Majority Leader of the National Assembly, Hon. Fabakary Tombong Jatta, donated a water-pumping machine to the women of Alkali Kunda in the North Bank Region to help them answer to the President’s back-to-the-land call. The women of Alkali Kunda have a vegetable garden just outside the village and now their work will be a lot easier because they will not have to carry the water to the garden like women all over the rest of the country.

Here in The Gambia we are blessed with fertile land, almost year round sunlight and plentiful water. If we can combine all of these things, we can easily answer the President’s call, feed ourselves and even export food to other countries.

At the moment if you go to the market and ask where the cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, potatoes and even onions are from the most likely answer would be Senegal. How can we import these vegetables that are easily grown here? The Senegalese are less fortunate than us as a comparatively great part of their land is turning into desert. When the food crisis starts to bite them, they will eat the food themselves and stop exporting to us. What will we do then? We cannot rely on others.

The way this disaster is headed, we should be the ones exporting. This is Africa’s opportunity. When the food starts to run out and the prices get too high in Europe, they will be forced to get rid of the extortionate tariffs they put on imports from us. Then we will be able to sell food to them at reasonable prices for everyone involved.

Our opportunity is coming soon . . . Last year the amount of food aid given worldwide was 40% of that which was given in 1999. The prices are too high now and there isn’t enough to be giving it away. This is a clear warning that those who used to give food aid will soon need it.

Seeds are not expensive and they will pay for themselves a hundred times over as long as you are well organised. So go out and start growing. Even if you just grow a few vegetables, have a fruit tree or keep some animals in your compound, that is the first step in helping The Gambia gain rather than lose out because of this worldwide food crisis.

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Ebrima Joof, Principal of Armitage Senior Secondary School, has disclosed that the global food crisis has hit Armitage Senior Secondary School, a boarding school with a population of 580 students. 

In an interview with the Daily Observer,  Mr Joof said that the sky rocketing of the price of rice and other commodities had made it the difficult for the school to feed its 580 students  three times a day. He said that they used four bags of rice and one bag of flour per day to feed that number of students, describing that as a big task that needed the intervention of individual donors ßand other philanthropists.

Mr Joof told Daily Observer that the school fees, which is five hundred dalasis (500) per term, out of which three hundred (300) dalasis is for boarding fees, was not enough to feed them and that some students were still in arrears. The principal stressed that the school fees for two students could not buy a bag of rice in Janjangbureh, adding that one bag of rice cost eight hundred Dalasis.

Mr Joof commended the Gambian leader, President Dr. Alhaji. Yahya Jammeh, who, he said, sometime in 2006, donated food items to the school. He described the gesture as one worthy of emulation.  He also commended Gambia Ports Authority(GPA), North Bromsgrove High School, West African tours, Dynamic travel and the Armitage Ex-students Association, for their support to the school.

Before the food crisis that now rocks the world, it was fashionable to say that most Africans lived on less that US$1 a day. With what is happening now, many more would be living on less that one US cent a day before long! Suddenly, there is a food shortage resulting in soaring prices. As usual, the worst hit places are the Third World countries as evident in the riots in Cameroon, Haiti and Indonesia. It is so bad that the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has described the unfolding situation as the “silent tsunami”. This imagery is at once appropriate and frightening because the tsunami conjures up images of death, destruction and desolation.

The US President George W. Bush was spot on when he said: “In some of the world’s poorest nations, rising prices can mean the difference between getting a daily meal and going without food.” And when this is taken together with the statistics provided by the WFP, then there is need for urgent action. According to the WFP, 100 million people are currently going short of food. This is the issue in hand: what can be done to avoid widespread hunger and malnutrition and social unrest?

We are glad to see that the United States government has risen to the challenge, with President Bush offering us $770m in international food aid “to help ease the effects of surging food prices”. Whether or not the money will only be available in October, we appreciate the gesture nonetheless. Since the “new aid comprises US$ 620m in direct food aid, mainly to needy African countries, and US$ 150m in long-term projects to help farmers in developing countries”, it will eventually come in useful for the people it is meant.

It is also heartening that UN is not folding its arms. According to reports, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has already set up a task force to deal with the ongoing food crisis. The task force hopes to among other things offer US$ 200m financial support to farmers in the worst affected countries to boost food production and to set up a US $1.7bn programme to help countries with a food deficit to buy seeds.

The current food crisis is a major challenge that humanity must face up to and surmount, as it had overcome other seemingly insurmountable crises in the past. In this regard, we all have a collective responsibility to treat the environment with even greater care. In dealing with this problem, we should put structures in place to ensure that what we are experiencing now does not happen again.

Before the food crisis that now rocks the world, it was fashionable to say that most Africans lived on less that US$1 a day. With what is happening now, many more would be living on less that one US cent a day before long! Suddenly, there is a food shortage resulting in soaring prices. As usual, the worst hit places are the Third World countries as evident in the riots in Cameroon, Haiti and Indonesia. It is so bad that the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has described the unfolding situation as the “silent tsunami”. This imagery is at once appropriate and frightening because the tsunami conjures up images of death, destruction and desolation.

The US President George W. Bush was spot on when he said: “In some of the world’s poorest nations, rising prices can mean the difference between getting a daily meal and going without food.” And when this is taken together with the statistics provided by the WFP, then there is need for urgent action. According to the WFP, 100 million people are currently going short of food. This is the issue in hand: what can be done to avoid widespread hunger and malnutrition and social unrest?

We are glad to see that the United States government has risen to the challenge, with President Bush offering us $770m in international food aid “to help ease the effects of surging food prices”. Whether or not the money will only be available in October, we appreciate the gesture nonetheless. Since the “new aid comprises US$ 620m in direct food aid, mainly to needy African countries, and US$ 150m in long-term projects to help farmers in developing countries”, it will eventually come in useful for the people it is meant.

It is also heartening that UN is not folding its arms. According to reports, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has already set up a task force to deal with the ongoing food crisis. The task force hopes to among other things offer US$ 200m financial support to farmers in the worst affected countries to boost food production and to set up a US $1.7bn programme to help countries with a food deficit to buy seeds.

The current food crisis is a major challenge that humanity must face up to and surmount, as it had overcome other seemingly insurmountable crises in the past. In this regard, we all have a collective responsibility to treat the environment with even greater care. In dealing with this problem, we should put structures in place to ensure that what we are experiencing now does not happen again.