Seedy Kanyi, General Manager GTSC
By Fatou Sillah
A fire broke out at the Gambia Transport Service Company (GTSC) premises in Kanifing, engulfing more than ten decommissioned buses that had been sold as scrap to dealer Abdoulie Bojang. According to GTSC General Manager Seedy Kanyi, the affected vehicles were part of a fleet acquired between 2013 and 2015 and had long been retired from service.
“It came as a result of the scrap dealer that we sold scrap buses to. The buses that we acquired in 2013, 2014 and 2015 that we have already scrapped, they are off our books, and we have officially written them off, and we have sold them as scrap to this scrap dealer, agreed on a price, part of which was already paid, and today they came to cut the metal or the scrap bus into movable pieces to remove them from our side to their areas,”
Kanyi told Kerr Fatou.
The General Manager attributed the fire to sparks generated by grinding machines used in the cutting process.
“While doing that today, using grinding machines and cutting disks, using grinders on metal. There was only a spark. So the spark caused a fire on the buses that have old tires and a few dry grasses around them, and the area caught fire, and it engulfed about 10 of the buses that we scrapped. Unfortunately, all of them were burned, with very few spared,” he explained.
Kanyi further disclosed that GTSC had advised the scrap dealer to exercise caution while handling the dismantling process, but these precautions were not adequately followed.
“We have taken it up with them, that we expected them to take adequate precautions when they were cutting the scrap buses. They failed to, and he accepted that they should have done it, but unfortunately they could not. It is him that is going to lose his money—not the whole money, but part of it—because burnt steel will lose weight. But fortunately for us and for everybody, there was no injury, no death; nobody was injured, nobody killed In the incident, and none of our good buses were affected as well,” he noted.