The community of Nianija, with the support of the Kuntaur Area Council, recently embarked on a Tesito (a Mandinka parlance, meaning community service) exercise for the  rehabilitation of a two-kilometer road from Bakadagi to Jailand in the Nianija District, Central River Region North. 

Speaking at the exercise, Alasan David Cham, the chief of Nianija district, commended the people of the district for their positive turn out.

He said government cannot do all for her people, which makes it is also an obligation for citizens to venture into development initiatives.

The Bakadagi-Jailand road, Chief Cham added, was eroded by heavy rains recently.
He thanked Kuntaur Area Council for supporting his community with fuel and cement to facilitate the work there. 
He then revealed that similar works are also underway in Njau and Gui Jahanka.

All Gambians who use the various roads which have been constructed and repaired over the last ten years will no doubt appreciate governments efforts in this regard.

It is an undeniable fact that the Government of the Gambia has for the past years concentrated her efforts in constructing roads across the country. The Kombo Coastal road, Farafenni-Laminkoto and Serrekunda-Mandinaba are a clear testimony of these efforts.

However, the Secretary of State for Works, Construction and Infrastructure, Lamin Bojang, on Monday gave a break down of the cost and sources of funding of the roads constructed for the past 10 years, which amounted to US$82m.

Responding to a question raised by Hon. Sidia Jatta, Member for Wuli West, as to the roads that have been constructed for the past 10 years, their cost and sources of funding, Secy. Lamin Bojang said the Essau-Kerewan road project, a 51 Kilometre stretch funded the Republic of China on Taiwan and the Gambia Government cost US$7.2m.

According to the Works, Construction and Infrastructure Secy, the Kombo Coastal road project, a 168 Kilometre stretch funded by the Kuwaiti Fund, BADEA and The Gambia Government cost a total amount of US$14.6m.

He also revealed that the Farafenni-Laminkoto road project, a 115 Kilometre stretch funded by the Kuwaiti Fund, Opec Fund and The Gambia Government cost US$25.0m.

“The Kerewan-Farafenni road project, a 59 Kilometre stretch sponsored by International Development Bank IDB and the Government of the Gambia cost a total amount of US$18.5m while the Serrekunda-Mandinaba road project, a 28 Kilometre stretch sponsored by IDB and The Gambia Government cost US$16.7m”, he revealed.

On the total number of feeder roads constructed and completed from 2006-08, Secy. Bojang said between the year under review, three major feeder roads were constructed in the Western Region to boost standard.

For Secy. Bojang, a feeder road programme is being prepared to give a nation-wide coverage to the effect. The programme, he added, has been submitted to the EU for their consideration to fund.

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A loan agreement was on Friday signed in Banjul between the Republic of The Gambia and Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development. The Fund will provide a loan of 3,100,000 Kuwaiti Dinars, equivalent to about US$10,850,000, to assist in the financing of the Banjul international Airport Improvement Project (Phase II).

The loan agreement was signed on behalf of the Republic of The Gambia by Honourable Mousa Gibril Bala-Gaye, Secretary of State for Finance and Economic Affairs and by Mr. Hamad S. Al-Omar, Deputy Director-General of the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development on behalf of the Fund.

The project aims at satisfying the increase in passenger and cargo traffic at BanjulInternationalAirport, and to further ensure its safety. Aimed at improving the operational standards of the airport, the project consists of rehabilitation and expansion of the existing apron, construction of two new taxiways and a building for fire and ambulance services, rehabilitation of the existing terminal building and the control tower, supply and installation of navigation systems, signs, pavement marking and apron lighting, fire rescue vehicle, in addition to consultancy services for the supervision of construction works.

The total cost of the project is estimated at about 776.66 million Dalasis, equivalent to about 10.1 million Kuwaiti Dinars of which the Fund’s loan covers about 31%. The main co-financing are the Saudi Fund and the OPEC Fund. The project is expected to be completed by mid 2010.

By concluding this agreement, the Fund would have provided to the Republic of The Gambia nine loans totalling about 22.8 million Kuwaiti Dinars, equivalent to about 79.8 million US Dollars, to finance projects in various sectors, in addition to five technical assistance grant and totalling about 770,000 Kuwaiti Dinars, equivalent to about 2.7 million US Dollars.

War-ravaged northern Uganda is to be reconstructed at a cost of US$600 million, according to the government.

The rehabilitation, announced by President Yoweri Museveni on 16 October, is intended to restore stability to the region after 20 years of warfare pitting the Ugandan government against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal insurgency that often targeted civilians for murder, maiming and abduction.

Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and forced to live in crowded camps.

Most of the funding is expected to come from donors and a conference is being organised to secure funding commitments, according to David Wakikona, the minister in charge of the region.

"The goal of the plan is stabilisation in order to consolidate peace, recovery and rehabilitation of the north," Museveni said.

He said the Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) for Northern Uganda would be implemented over the next three years. Some funds were, however, immediately available to help people who were maimed during the conflict.

In a related development, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) for the first time in Uganda launched a food airdrop operation as part of an effort to reach tens of thousands of displaced people after heavy rains and severe flooding made aid delivery by road in northern and eastern regions of the country impossible.

An Antonov-12 cargo aircraft on 13 October started a month-long operation to drop food from the air to thousands of displaced people, according to a statement. Cereals, pulses, sugar and highly nutritious corn-soya blend were being delivered by air from stores in the northern town of Gulu.

"Resorting to food airdrops reflects the severity of the heavy rains and floods, which in some parts of Uganda are the worst in 35 years," said WFP Uganda Acting Country Director Alix Loriston. "There is simply no other way to get survival rations to isolated people.”

Flooding has directly affected 300,000 people in northern and eastern Uganda, while tens of thousands of displaced in the north of the country are still unreachable as floodwaters have cut off roads.

The northern Uganda rehabilitation plan's other immediate priority requirements include the provision of safe drinking water, rebuilding of schools, establishing health services and carrying out immunisation campaigns and HIV/AIDS awareness programmes. Other services envisaged under the plan include micro-finance facilities and the provision of farming implements.

In 2005, the number of displaced people's camps in the northern regions of Acholi, Lango, West Nile and Teso was put at 242, with an estimated population of 1.8 million. People have, however, been returning to their homes of origin as security improved following the stepping-up of military operations against the LRA and the ongoing peace talks in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan.

By end-June 2007, it was estimated that 916,000 people remained in camps, mainly in the Acholi sub-region, while 539,000 had returned their villages. About 381,000 people had moved to new transit settlements near their villages, according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

Brenda Fassie, the legendary South African pop singer who sold millions of records across Africa and around the world, died in a Johannesburg hospital on May 9, 2004 after spending 13 days in a coma. The post-mortem said her final dose of cocaine was the cause of death. She was only 39 years old. MaBrrr, as she was affectionately nicknamed by her fans, had tried to resolve her severe addictions over the years at various treatment centers – in fact, more than 30 times – but, unfortunately for MaBrrr and her millions of admirers, she never found a truly successful drug rehab program.

Fassie, the youngest of nine kids, was named after Brenda Lee, the American singer. Her pianist mother let her earn money by singing for tourists in the streets. In 1981 at 16, Fassie left Cape Town to seek her fortune as a singer in Johannesburg’s Soweto district. Soweto, short for “South West Townships”, had long been under the grinding heel of South Africa’s white supremacist apartheid policy. Poverty, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, illness and crime were rampant, and drug rehab facilities as we know them today were virtually unknown. But there was art, there was music, there were night clubs to sing in and a vibrant culture was being created by Soweto’s people. Nelson Mandela lived there for years, as did Bishop Desmond Tutu and other famous black South Africans.

Five years before Fassie arrived, Soweto police opened fire on 10,000 protesting students marching peacefully from Naledi High School to Orlando Stadium. In the events that unfolded, 566 people died. The impact of the Soweto Uprising, as it became known, reverberated throughout the country and around the world. Soweto became the stage for violent state repression and the roaring social and political oven in which Fassie forged the direction of her music – by the mid-‘90s, she was the unequivocal voice of black oppression. But she had also formed a drug addiction so strong that it managed to resist one treatment program after another. Without access to a real drug rehab, Fassie was unable to break the habit.

In 2001 Time magazine dubbed Fassie “The Madonna of the Townships” and indeed she was. Fassie managed to combine ground-breaking musical success with a personal accessibility and human fallibility that drew a fierce loyalty and protectiveness from fans. Her career was studded with record sales and awards, but punctuated also by periodic scandals, recurring battles with drug addiction, and lows in her musical career that saw her written off by the press.

On June 12, 2006, two years after her death, family and friends paid tribute to Fassie at the unveiling of a huge new tombstone at Cape Town's Langa cemetery. Wreaths from former president Nelson Mandela and President Thabo Mbeki – who had both visited her in the hospital where she lay in a coma – were placed on the family grave where Fassie was buried with her mother and father. The family is planning a museum in her honor, where her music and other memorabilia will be displayed. And perhaps most significant is the planned Brenda Fassie Foundation that would financially assist young drug addicts in need of a successful drug rehab program.

Rod MacTaggart is a Florida-based freelance writer who contributes articles on health. info@addictionhelpservices.com http://www.addictionhelpservices.com/drug-rehab.asp

Voluntary repatriation of Southern Sudanese refugees from Uganda is set to increase with the introduction of a third corridor of return to Eastern Equatoria state in August, the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said on Wednesday.

Officials from Uganda, South Sudan and the UNHCR met in Kampala and agreed that the pace of return should be expedited, despite the logistical challenges.

UNHCR’s spokeswoman in Kampala, Robertta Russo, told IRIN that the agency expected more people to volunteer to return home to southern Sudan. "Seventy percent of the refugees in Uganda are from Eastern Equatoria and we are expecting a lot of people wanting to go back home," she said.

Hundreds of thousands of people sought safety in neighbouring countries after the civil war between former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLAM/A) and the Khartoum-based government broke out in 1983. The war formally ended in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the government and the SPLM/A, which now runs a semi-autonomous administration in South Sudan.

Russo noted that the bulk of the US$65 million appeal to fund the repatriation exercise had not been received. "We appealed for $65 million, but we have only managed to realise 25 percent of that and we have to look for avenues to bridge the gap," she said.

At the meeting on Wednesday, a 'Framework Joint Plan of Action for Enhancing Voluntary Repatriation and Reintegration of Sudanese Refugees in Uganda' was endorsed.

Uganda hosts 221,000 refugees, including 165,936 Sudanese living in settlements in northwestern and western Uganda. About 11,000 Sudanese refugees have left camps in Uganda and gone back home since the signing of the peace agreement.

The tripartite commission agreed to undertake resource mobilisation jointly and resolved to organise a donor conference to raise funds for repatriation and reintegration programmes and rehabilitation projects in areas of Uganda that hosted the refugees.

"As the repatriation operation progresses and continues to gather momentum, the government and people of Uganda, particularly the refugee-hosting communities, will require integrated post-repatriation support to rehabilitate the environment, their infrastructure and economy. We appeal to donors and development agencies to support this worthy initiative in partnership with concerned local communities,” said Stefano Severe, UNHCR representative in Uganda.