By Fatou Sillah
Ebrima Sillah, the Minister of Works, Transport, and Infrastructure, has stated that the government has never delayed paying civil servants’ salaries.
Speaking during an interview at the Non-Elective Congress of the National People’s Party (NPP) in Jarra Soma, Sillah addressed concerns raised about the challenging living conditions in The Gambia. He argued that the situation in the country is better compared to other nations.
“If you want to know the difficulty of living conditions just pass the borders of the Gambia and ask for the price of rice, and sugar and come back to The Gambia and compare the prices the month will not elapse without people receiving their salaries in government. People are still coming here for business. People should go out and work, negative comments only will not remove this from us. No Country has ever stood on its own just by talking. Gambian youth should go out and work. All the ministers here have gardens or other businesses that we to every weekend for work,” He said.
The Minister urged Gambians to embrace a culture of hard work, noting that laborers from other African countries travel to The Gambia to earn a living.
“People should stop talking, when you come to the areas of road construction, people come from Sere Leone, Ghana, Togo, and Benin to work our youth refuse to work and we are paying those people every day D700, can’t Gambians do that work?” He asked.
Sillah further criticized the culture of dependency and idleness among some Gambians.
“Nobody can remove hunger from you if you are just sitting at home, people come from other countries to work here and they will go ask those people for money when they close from work, how can we stop hunger in the people Gambians let’s try and work to fight hunger, that is the only that we can do, negative comments from the opposition or just mere talking cannot stop hunger we have to work,” He Said.
On political matters, the Minister described the NPP as the largest political party in The Gambia, claiming it surpasses the United Democratic Party (UDP) in both votes and parliamentary seats.
“Every big party is shown based on the numbers you have in elections. What we have in the election can double what they have (UDP) so they should prove that they are the biggest party by numbers. During the parliamentary election, who has the highest seat in the parliament? All this I am saying shows that we are the biggest party because when we went on election who had the highest votes? Some people just keep deceiving themselves. 24 years the same thing but in 2026 it will be clear who the biggest party is,” He Said.