The Confederation of African Football (CAF) officials once again inspected and determined that our National Stadium is NOT FIT for hosting international tournaments. Gambia For All (GFA) party demands accountability for those responsible for this unacceptable national embarrassment.
One has to wonder whether there is anyone in president Barrow’s government who knows, or even ever heard of a check list of standards that quality management organizations use as inspection tools to qualify or disqualify venues for their matches. These inspection tools ensure that uniformity of services, amenities and performance of tasks are consistent across the board and are in line with international standards.
These standards are generally issued by various international organizations and should be readily available to anyone who cares to look and makes an effort to get them. It is therefore incomprehensible why the Inspection Rules that CAF uses cannot be properly followed by the Barrow administration officials. Are they trying to cut corners or are they simply incompetent? They owe an explanation to The Gambian people.
The reported disapproval, once again by CAF, of our only national stadium’s fitness to stage category 3 matches, is not a surprise to us in GFA, and indeed to many Gambians. What will surprise us on the other hand, is whether President Barrow will hold individuals accountable for this disgraceful and wasteful episode regarding our only international stadium’s fitness for purpose.
It is common knowledge that the scandal involving the stadium, is one of a long list of poorly executed projects by this administration. Such poorly executed projects also include millions of Dalasis spent renovating the international airports, with results that put the entire country to shame.
Even the road projects that president Barrow keeps mentioning as part of his legacy, and what he advances as his reason d’etre for a controversial third term bid, which is infamously referred to as “trioseme mandat” in our subregion. All these projects suffer from the same poor-quality issues identified by CAF inspectors regarding the national stadium.
The bewildering level of incompetence that is pervasive in all sectors ot the Barrow administration is bringing the nation down on its knees, so to speak. Regrettably, president Barrow’s solution to the issue of incompetency is to pay journalist to report favourably on ongoing government projects, in a bid to enhance the Ministry of Information’s peddling of alternative realities that are in plain sight of people’s everyday experiences.
Let politicians, administrators, contractors, and project managers be reminded that collaborating, participating or enabling the administration to defraud the public, will be held to account however long it takes.
GFA would like to reiterate, once again, that we fight an unrelenting battle against official corruption, to ensure that what is for the Gambian public, goes to the Gambian public. Very simply put, there is no compromise on this principle.
