PDOIS leader
By Ramatoulie Jawo
The Secretary General, People’s Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS), Halifa Sallah, on Wednesday said that tourism in the Gambia is not people-centered.
“Why I said tourism in the Gambia is not people-centered, if you want to bring one hundred thousand people or more, to visit the Gambia and have an impact economically, then you have to link them to the productive base of the Gambia economy,” he said.
He said that if they could promote tourism by telling the tourists that in the Gambia, they (Gambia’s tourism authorities) want to eradicate poverty of their people without them being beggars.
Sallah said in order to achieve that, Gambia’s tourism authorities must promote products produced in the Gambia by their own people such as weaved clothes, portraits, honey, fruits and the likes; saying when that is promoted, at least when the tourists come to The Gambia, they would buy one of that and take it for remembrance.
“We are talking about billions, but billions that will go directly into our own people. That is the tourism we wish to promote, but that is not the tourism that exists,” he stressed.