The minister for Interior, Abdoulie Sanyang has disclosed before deputies of the National Assembly Members that with support from GIZ, his ministry plans to build another five new police stations in Brikama, Basse, Soma, Farafenni, and a hybrid one in URR.

He explained that hybrid police station is the one that does both the PIO and the general duty jobs.

He stated that the provision of better infrastructure and conducive working environment is a high priority of the leadership and management of Gambia Police Force. However, he added that due to constraint in the 2024 budgetary allocation, the need for renovation of police stations was not attained. "Therefore, renovation could not be done effectively even though some are done."

"But in partnership with the German GIZ and UNDP, few police stations were built including Serrekunda, Bundung, a renovation at Bakoteh and UNDP is currently completing the one in Essau."

He further emphasised that they cannot engage in renovation of police stations due to limited budgetary allocation to his ministry.

"And you have to understand that, most of our stations are being rented like 60% of them are rented. Therefore the budget is not there for us to do a proper renovation," he stated.

"Even D10 million is not enough to do a proper renovation for all police stations. We have a total number of 150 police stations. Sometimes we even do it by ourselves as we are getting some funds from donor partners like the Escort Services."

He made it clear to lawmakers that his ministry doesn't just build a police station because a community wants a police station.

"Currently we are having problems in sustaining our existing police stations. Because you don't have it anywhere in the world where you see five police stations or five police posts in a two-mile radius.

"We are even trying to see how best we can reduce the number of police stations and also add capacity of the person in a particular police station so that they can do patrols and policing effectively."