Gambia can employ its youths if…- PS Njie

The Permanent Secretary, Department of state for Youth and Sport has anticipated that The Gambia can count on its youth population for employment if investors from both local and international level focus their attention to venturing into the processing industries to produce the country’s own indigenous resources.

In effect, he said this would create mass engagement of young people and discourages the mentality of sitting at the ghettos from down to dust. He said with the tons of groundnuts and fruits that are produced by Gambians, this could be effectively utilised to produce more groundnut oil, with the employment scope solely dependent on the young people.

The kinds of fruits in the country, he added, could also be capitalised on to establish tea and juice processing industries, as well as capitalising on the number of reared cattle to establish milk processing plant. This he added will help cut down the country’s dependency on only imported products’.

Mambanjik Njie made these remarks last Tuesday, during an interview with the Daily Observer on the mechanisms in place by his department of state in the attainment of the resolutions passed by the young people from the just concluded 8th edition of the biennial National Youth Conference and Festival (Nayconf), held in Farafenni.   

According to him, the implementation of NAYCONF resolutions are of fundamental importance, hence they represent the views and requests of the young people for their own development. In effect, PS Njie continued that everybody (including his department of state and the young people as well as stakeholders), have leading roles to play in the attainment of the resolutions. He highlighted that though his department of state as mandated on them can implement some of the resolutions, but was quick to observe that others can be attained in collaboration with partnering sectors.

The youth permanent secretary further vowed that his department of state would collaborate with all the relevant sectors and partners in making sure that the resolutions especially the achievable ones, are implemented in the short, medium and long term. He expressed believe that NAYCONF will be useless if resolutions are only passed without been implemented. ‘It is in recognition of this that we have to task ourselves not to only measure the success of NAYCONF by how well it has been organised, but instead we measure it by how many of the resolutions are implemented’ he noted.

PS Njie however observed that, it must be bond in mind that the implementation of the resolutions cannot be done over night. When asked about his department of state’s concern about the unprecedented rate of youth convictions at the courts nowadays, PS Njie explained that the problems of young people cannot be left in only the hands of his department for solving.

Due to the high rate of youth conviction, he said, his department of state has earlier conducted a tour of ghettos within the greater Banjul area to discuss with them. ‘As a department of state, we are doing all that we can, to redirect the course of young people in order to reduce their rate of conviction" he concluded.