Posted by By Halimatou Ceesay
Four candidates namely Ousman Rambo Jatta APRC, Dawda Njie GDC, Papa Njie Independent, and Modou Jenkins Independent were today 23rd April, 2018 nominated to contest for the highly contested seat of KMC in the upcoming mayoral and chairperson election slated for May 12th.
The candidates were accompanied to the IEC KM Regional office by their supporters singing, dancing and chanting praises on them, as they take to turn and go through the process of presenting their credentials.
The first to storm the Election house in the early hours of the morning was Modou Jenkins an Independent Mayoral Candidate.
Jenkins said “I see the way things are going in the municipality and I feel like the right person to change things is me. I have the intelligence which means the ability to get things done.”
He said he will work to make sure that all his agendas be implemented. He said his priority areas are to work on the market and roads, adding that as a regular traveller he knows a lots of institutions in the Gambia, “however most of them (the institution) are corrupt and corruption is a system and not an individual issue, and this is one of the problems I will be looking into in KMC,” he said.
The road was then cleared to usher in the convoy of Papa Njie Independent Mayoral Aspirant.
Njie said “I already declared myself as Mayor of KMC.” He claimed that he is the most qualified person with moralistic vision. He said the difference between him and others is that he has the solutions to the problems of KMC, adding that he has plans and solutions to in KMC, and the solutions includes collection of rates efficiency, roads, education, etc. and these he noted will be discussed in his manifesto.
He added that the first problem to be solved is the operation efficiency of KMC that is very important. He said if rates are not collected properly they won’t be able to do all they want to. He said he will transform the way of rate collections, so that people can start paying to the Bank. He said his source of funding is local and personal.
APRC then coloured the road to IEC Green with their candidate Ousman Rambo Jatta.
Jatta said they are going to emerge as winners come May 12th because they have seen their loopholes from the councillorship election and that they are working tirelessly to regulate it.
He said he was a councilor for two terms and knows the problems of KMC and some the problems were tackled by him in his first 100 days in office.
“I am about to launch my manifest and that day all the media houses will be invited so I don’t want to exhaust it here. I am not contesting for money or greed, because I have been doing it for the people and the time I was doing it I was not thinking of contesting Mayoral seat. It is natural in me to help the less privilege and I want to make sure that lives and livelihoods of the people are ensured,” he said.
The last but not the list to add fanfare and colour with supporters to IEC was Dawda Njie alias Pa Njie Girigara GDC Mayoral Candidate.
Pa Njie said he will close the Bakoteh Dumping site; clean the streets, repair the bad feeder roads, increase market space, and reduce taxes. He said these are among the programs that he will embark on when elected.
“One thing I want to emphasize here is that KMC cannot depend only on taxes. If you look at tax revenue last year, it was about D100 million. Today KMC owes over D200 million to NAWEC alone so this means that two years tax collection will just go into paying debts. We must design some other means of getting revenue,” he said.
He added that as a businessman with forty years of experience in generating revenue and profit margin, if elected he will get revenue other than their taxes. He said he doesn’t need the voters’ money instead he will dedicate his salary to KMC and put D1Million aside to sponsor needy students from primary to university level.