Vice President Muhammed BS Jallow yesterday led members of the Presidential Task Force on Electricity Supply and senior officials to welcome the arrival of two of the three new power generators promised by President Barrow at the height of the recent power outages. The third one is expend shortly and all are expected to be in operation by the end of October or early November.
Speaking to a sizeable assembly of journalists at the Banjul port, VP Jallow said the new generators form part of government’s immediate response to the power crisis.
“As the president has promised, we want to make sure that we increase our installed capacity and this is one of that efforts. But the overall plan remains to make sure that the issue of electricity will be permanently fixed,” he said.
He added that in fact electricity supply is “already stabilised”, but government wants to increase the country’s installed generation capacity to prevent a return of the recent disruptions.
The vice president added that the generators are different from the China-backed electricity support project announced recently.
He explained that the target means ensuring that “every community, every village, every hamlet in this country will have access to electricity, as other partners too have pledged to help The Gambia.
The Managing Director of Nawec, Gallo Saidy, said each of the three generators has a capacity of about 10.5 megawatts, giving a combined capacity of 21 megawatts which he said would address some of the difficulties Nawec faces in meeting the electricity gap, particularly when there are problems within the system. He said the contact has been refinanced by the contractor and that the machines are new.