The two main alleged forgers were arrested last week when the matter came to light through one of their complainants whose documents were believed to be forged.
Narrating this act to this reporter in his office in Fajara, Musa Drammeh, director of Operations, CSCG, said he received a call from one of the consulates, saying “there are documents that I need to verify and confirm,” meaning one of the persons documents were suspected to be forged.
He affirmed that “those documents were all fakes. They were purported to be from CSCG but none of them emanated is from our office or went through the CSCG due channel or process.”
Recruitment at CSCG, he explained, needs an applicant to go through all laid down international standard processes which include form filing, interview, and basic training at GTTI where applicant or applicants will be certified to apply for the Seaman Book at the Gambia Maritime Administration and fulfill the medical requirement tests, acquiring of the police report and so on.
However, he said, in opposition to the above, the alleged forgers created CSCG documents among others with the aid of their graphic designer who always “edit and make some alterations of the LOE and LOI issued to qualified candidates with other names through using computer.”
Mr. Drammeh disclosed that one of the alleged forgers, Nfamara Jabang, once applied for a Cruise Ship job at the CSCG and succeeded. He was awaiting his deployment but “his visa application was rejected at the American Embassy two times.”
“From thereon he has been going around canvassing people to register and collect money from innocent people and forged our documents and the international document called LOE and LOI (Letter of Employment and Letter Of Invitation) in his possession with the aid of their graphic designer who will make the alteration and edit them on the computer). He was doing this with Sulayman Sarr who works at Payless Travel Agency.”
The CSCG director of Operations emphasised that recruitment at Cruise Ship Crew Gambia is free of charge as “opposed to the alleged forgers, Nfamara Jabang and his counterpart, Sulayman Sarr who always charged the innocent young Gambians an outrageous amount of D100,000 and D200,000.00 depending on the country of applicant’s choice without no recruitment process.”
“When applicants take the fake LOI and LOE documents to the Gambia Maritime Administration, they would pay for Seaman Books, which will allow those applicants to apply with fake documents. Initially, the Consulates accepted them to be genuine but with the influx of applicants, they noticed that they were not sent by the recruitment agent (CSCG) in the country, therefore, they suspected the genuineness of documents and raised alarm to contact us,” Drammeh explained
Meanwhile, an investigation has been opened by the police after their arrest.
Read Other Articles In Headlines
