The Gambia Transport Union has threatened a sit-down strike if the government fails to meet their demands by 13 September.

The union accused the government of “taking the money of the commercial vehicle owners” which is against the Local Government Act.

Omar Ceesay, president of the union, told a news conference in Banjul: “If the government did not fulfil our demands, we gave them now against 13th September if it is not fulfilled, we will sit down till our demands are fulfilled.

“I called on all regions from Banjul to Basse because we talked, we followed the government, if you did not know where to go you should return to where you are from.

“We know what our law has given us and what the Labour Act gave to us, we know our procedures and we have very good lawyers that are working for the union.

“We wrote to the government 10 of August 2021 giving them our demands stating what we want and if they did not fulfil our demands, we will declare 13th September as a sit-down strike until they met our demands.”

“In the report we have only 12 demands but in this case, we expect them to fulfil only six out of the 12 that we will not joke with and the only thing that can stop us is when they gave us a better idea than ours, give us something that is good for the Gambians.

“We are all Gambians our first demand is that the government to give us a garage that was part of our first sit down strike we talked and we agreed on something that the garage is our concern,” he added.

“60 percent of the revenue will come back to us but where is that 60 percent so we are asking the government to give us that money.”

Reporting by Adama Makasuba