The headquarters of the Gambia’s national police, is reportedly bursting at its seams as it “struggles” to accommodate the sheer number of police officers that work there on a daily basis.
The Gambia Police Force (GPF) HQ in the Gambian capital, Banjul, was built in the First Republic, and it was not constructed to accommodate the number of officers who now work there, sources said.
As the GPF evolved over the years, the HQ can no longer provide that commodious space for its current occupants to be able to do their job with much more ease, JollofNews has learned.
At a time when the governing party is pounding its chest for building modern political offices across almost all the local government areas of The Gambia, the country’s police HQ, the beating heart of all police operations, is falling into disrepair.
There were times when toilets there overflowed with water while cracks appeared on the walls.
According to a Gambia Police Force expert, the HQ is in need of decongesting to enable the police to do their job in a more convivial setting.
“The police HQ was built during the Sir Dawda-era and since then, it did not go through any major redevelopment,” the GPF expert said.
“Space is fast-becoming a problem at the police HQ because the GPF has apparently failed to keep pace with the ever-changing policing dynamics,” one commentator, who asked not to be named, opined when engaged on the issue.
Meanwhile, the GPF has yet to get a custom-built training school. The current police training school is housed in structures that were built for the purpose of teacher training.
“The current police training school is located at a place purposely built to train teachers and this lack of purpose-built police training school can negatively affect training outcomes,” the GPF expert opined.
The spokesperson of the Gambia Police Force, ASP Modou Musa Sisawo, did not respond to our request for comment on the issues raised in the story up to the time of this post.
