The recent press release by the Ministry of Interior in response to the trending complaints of the issuing of ID cards to Gambian migrants in certain countries in the sub-region, has obviously fallen short of addressing the public concern over the matter.
In the release, the ministry tried to justify the decision on the basis that their action is within the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which gives the government of the Gambia the right to issue documents to its citizens wherever they may be.
Of course, while certain political parties have described the action as unlawful and even threatened to take legal action, but the main concern to many Gambians is why the government would spend millions of tax payers money to despatch teams to these countries simply to issue ID cards, especially when Gambians at home are struggling to access those same documents. There are Gambians at home spending their valuable time everyday trying to renew their ID cards but to no avail.
According to the release, “The decision to deploy enrolment teams abroad took into consideration the difficult situation our citizens find themselves in foreign countries when their documents expire and they are unable to return home for renewal,” which certainly does not make much sense. While our national ID card is supposed to be valid in Ecowas, but so far, all the countries that the immigration teams have visited, apart from Togo, are not members of Ecowas. One would therefore wonder whether those cards would ever serve any purpose in those countries. In fact, even neighbouring Senegal, an Ecowas member state does not accept our ID card for any transaction. “I have lived in Senegal for several years and neither their banks nor anywhere else would accept my Gambian ID card but they would always insist on me producing my passport,” said a Gambian migrant.
In such a situation therefore, it looks like sheer waste of tax payers money to pay for these teams to go and issue ID cards to Gambian migrants abroad when those cards would not address the plight of the migrants. In fact, how many Gambian migrants are in Togo and Gabon, for instance, to justify spending such huge amounts of money to send teams to those countries? Whoever came up with that idea and whatever the motive might be, it certainly does not make much economic sense. It would have definitely made more sense if they had concentrated on issuing passports to migrants rather than ID cards.
