18/11/2018
Wednesday, 14 November, 2018, it was a flurry of meetings and visits in Stockholm by Mr. Ousman Sillah, Banjul North National Assembly Member (NAM) while on his last day in the Swedish capital.
Accompanied by Mr. Buharry Gassama, Mr. Lamin Jarju and Mrs Bada Jobe Diene, who are all Gambians based in Sweden, the Banjul North MP started very early in the day with a meeting at the Jobbtorg Youth Employment Division of the Stockholm City Council Labour Market Administration.
Mr. Sillah held a meeting with some officials from different departments of the Centre who explained in detail the work they are doing in providing job placement and back to school programmes for young people between the ages of between 16 – 29 years.
The Centre officials who met the visiting Gambian MP were Disa Soderbar (Education Counsellor), Susan and Carolina (Youth Focus Project) and Sheriffa (Young IT Hosts). They told him that the Centre assists young people, including minors, with job placement for 6 months and also help others to go back to school. Among the target beneficiaries are the school drop outs, mentally challenged with diagnosis such as ADHD, Aspergers Syndrome etc, those with low self-esteem as well as the unemployed young people, including refugees.
They also offer preparatory courses to assist refugees to learn the Swedish language in order to make their integration into the society easy. In addition to finding job placements for its clients, the Centre also serves as a place where companies come to find employees.
Among the programmes being provided is the counselling service offered by doctors and counsellors to traumatised young people.
Mr. Gassama, who also works in this agency, explained that the young people are provided with the opportunity to study part-time and work part-time or work full time and be paid a motivational salary of 19,000 Swedish Crowns per month for the six months duration. This is being funded by the Stockholm City Council from tax payers money.
While on their way to the next appointment, Mr. Sillah and delegation stopped by the mausoleum to pay their respects to the respectable and well known former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was killed in cold blood by an assassin in the 80s.
From there, the team moved to the Stockholm City Archives, its second engagement in the last day of the Banjul North lawmaker’s short visit to Sweden.
While at the Stockholm City Archives, the delegation was received by Mr. Lennart Ploom, the Managing Director, and Peeter Mark, Archives Division Director who took them around to some parts of the facility, which is said to be more than two hundred years old and also the oldest in the world.
According to the Director, the construction of the National Archive came about as result of demands by the public to have free access to information or public records (freedom of information law) as they wanted to know how much public money was being collected and where it is spent. He said this was around the time when Sweden was the leader in Europe in the seventeenth century. He said the amount of documents kept there is about 85 kilometres of papers if placed on the ground.
The third engagement was a visit to a rehabilitation centre for those with mental illness, autism, Down's Syndrome etc.
They met with Mr. Jonathan, an official working at the facility, who took Mr. Sillah around the facility.
Mr. Sillah’s day ended with a meeting with the Gambian community in Stockholm. Among those present were the members of the Suhali Banjul group which includes Mr. Koro Sallah, Mr. Sahir Drammeh, a Stockholm City Councilor of Gambian descent, Mrs. Fatou Njie and a host of other compatriots who came from different places in Sweden to meet with the visiting National Assembly Member.
The Banjul North NAM, after explaining the purpose of his mission and the outcome of his engagements so far, implored the Gambian community to become more interested and involved with regards to matters happening at the national level back home. He applauded them for the support they continue giving their individual families and which is helping such families to escape the poverty in which many families find themselves. He told them that the Gambia can only be salvaged by Gambians both at home and in the diaspora. He said the better Gambia that they are all yearning for can only be realised if each and every one of them is committed to the mission of ‘One Gambia, One People and One Nation’.
The meeting, which was chaired by Mr. Drammeh, ended in a positive note with some resolutions on how to better organise and mobilise support from the Gambian community in Sweden towards national initiatives.
They hailed the visit as creating the impetus for them to pursue common goals.
The Suhali Banjul members also agreed to commit themselves to the realisation of the objectives of the organisation in supporting initiatives in Banjul.
On Thursday, 15 November, the Banjul North NAM was conveyed to the airport in Stockholm by Mr. Buharry Gassama to take a flight to Oslo.
