The five hectares garden has a borehole with twenty –four (24) reservoirs across the garden. It has a very fertile soil that is suitable for agriculture. Abandoning the mighty agricultural site has turned over two hundred women jobless for the past five years.
Speaking to The Point at the garden on Sunday, Isatou Jatta, president of Jiboroh Kuta Women Gardeners described abandoning the garden as backward for the women and the entire community.
“We have not been working at the garden for five years because whenever we cultivate our vegetables, livestock would intrude and destroy the plants,” she said.
She added: “The garden has a borehole but the fence is our major problem,” she argued.
Madam Jatta noted that this tragedy has turned over two hundred women jobless during the dry season, and made them to find it tedious to address their basic needs due to lack of other sources of income.
The women leader said the garden was very important for the community, noting women were using it to pay school fees for their children, clothing and feed their families among other important things.
Therefore, she called on government and development partners to come to their aid to ensure the fence is renovated, saying if the garden comes back to normalcy; it would enable them provide basic needs for their families.
Sarjo Jatta, a Giboroh resident, said the garden was very significant to the community at the time of its operation. He noted that many widows used the garden to sustain their families as well as pay their children’s school fees.
“It was of great benefit to us because the women were using their vegetables to earn income and buy something for family consumption,” he said.
Mr. Jatta further described the malfunctioning of the garden as backward to the women, family heads and the country as a whole, while justifying that the women’s earnings were beneficial to all.
He opined that there is a need for the government to provide the gardeners with proper fence, sufficient water supply and renovate cold storage facility to ensure they commence work.
