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Fish vendor wants Barrow to advise Old Yundum police officers

Aug 23, 2021, 12:15 PM | Article By: Sulayman Waan

Fatou Ceesay, a fish vendor at the Coastal Road Market in the Kombo North District has called on President Adama Barrow to advise the Old Yundum police officers to stop confiscating vendors’ goods and chasing them from the roadside.

Speaking exclusively to The Point on Monday at her selling point, she said: “President Barrow should not accept some of the things happening in the country. He should talk to them not to confiscate our goods.”

Speaking further she said: “Sometime, you would see a police officer running after a woman and if the police overtake, the officer would pour her goods on the ground. This is not nice.”

Ms Ceesay said women and youth are the drivers of development in any given country, but added the women vendors selling beside the Coastal Road Market are not happy with him as ‘the police are seriously disturbing us'. 

“Nowadays many women vendors are afraid of security officers and anytime a vendor sees a police officer she would run,” she said.

She said when President Barrow came to power in 2017, all Gambian women were having him at heart because they thought he was the solution to their problems.

“Before, we used him as a backup but now it's like our backup is about to fall; we are astonished,” she expressed.

She continued: “We are not telling the president to give us anything but the only thing we demand from him is to put mechanisms in place for us to sell our products peacefully. This is the only thing we need from our president.”

She noted that they depend on the market to feed their families, pay house rents, and provide needs for their school going children.

“Without selling our products here, we will find it difficult to survive,” she added.

When asked whether President Barrow has delivered his promises to women, 

She responded: “Before, we were thinking if the president takes power that would be the end of our suffocation but we have not seen anything yet.”

However, Ms Ceesay said the only support the vendors need from the government is to allow them sell on the coastal roadside.