She made this call at the recent 10th China-Gambia Bantaba platform as one of the participants who took the stage to share her China experiences.
The China-Gambia Bantaba was held at the Embassy in Bijilo under the theme “Up and Out of Poverty: Chinese Experience and Global Endeavor."
The occasion brought together Gambians from various walks of life who shared their remarkable experiences through an in-depth dialogue after recently being given the opportunity by the Chinese Embassy in Banjul to attend Seminars in China.
The event highlighted areas on how China and The Gambia could join hands in achieving modernisation and collectively overcoming poverty which also shared some of China’s path to poverty alleviation.
In her remarks, she said: “Yes, we can win votes, but at the end, if party A is doing this at this level and party B is in another level and doesn’t want to support that, because of party politics, are we eradicating poverty? Let us reflect on that because at the end, we are serving the Gambians.”
“So, whatever we are doing to eradicate poverty, let us reflect on who we are doing it for. We are not doing it for the Party, but we are doing it for the citizens of this country. We need to reflect on how China got out of poverty….” she said.
Further, she said poverty eradication is a process that is currently going on in The Gambia, noting that the Gambia government is doing well focusing on road infrastructure development.
She calls for attitudinal change towards effective agricultural development in The Gambia.
She said that the multi-party system in The Gambia should not make The Gambia different from China. “Our goal should be the same - to bring development to our people,” she said.
“We are doing it for the benefit of Gambians and not for our individual parties - the politics and fights against each other to win votes,” she noted.
She applauded China for sharing their poverty reduction experience with the world, particularly with The Gambia, saying what China does is: “not to do it for you, but to show you how they did it so that you will also be able to do it”.
She further applauded the Chinese people for having respect for their authorities, adding that they have collective approach to their development.
