Dockworkers have welcomed a new move to get their own company operational as short-term subsidiary of Gambia Ports Authourity for two years.

The company was designed by Ghana’s maritime transport firm Benom consultancy.

The Dockworkers Company will start operations at a sum of 10 million dalasis in early April.

It’s being setup as part of The Gambia Ports Authourity’s transformative programmes to get the nation’s only seaport to modern standards.

President of Gambia Maritime Dockworkers Union Lang Bala Sawo welcomed the move and said it will greatly help in addressing the longstanding plights of dockworkers at the port.

“99% of the revenues GPA earned came from the stevedores office and yet the dockworkers are the most poorest.

“The Gambia Ports Authority staff having risk allowance but the dockworkers do not have risk allowance and it’s us who will climb five containers high with life threatening work environment,” Lang told a news conference in Banjul today.

“But this company will be here to address all those problems. We don’t have social security and pension scheme. We want to get social security scheme just look at me I’m in my 60s and I’m still working as a dockworker,” he said, adding that he couldn’t afford to retire because of the lack of social security. 

“GPA is not paying us. It’s the shipping agency that is paying, but the money goes to GPA because they convert the money the shipping agency paid us into dalasis and then paid us.

“The agency gives the money to GPA in dollars or euros and they will change that money into dalasis and pay us with a small amount of money. 

“We don’t have anything. And we don’t have health insurance and we don’t have life insurance,” he said.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba