Woman With Substance
Friday 10th March 2006

Fatoumatta Jah alias Mata-Mata, proprietress of Lala’s Cleansing Service is a woman of substance, a Banjulian, attended Albion Wesley and St Mary’s Schools, then to Gambia High School. She later became a student nurse for one year, also worked as a civil servant for fifteen years. She worked at different ministries including the President’s Office. In 1995 she resigned from the public service and also from ,the hotel industry in which she did a brief stint. In 1996 she opened her own company, called Lala’s Cleansing services.

In today’s edition we bring you the interview with her on issues concerning her company.

Please read on:

She She: Aunty Mata Mata, what motivated you to institute such a company?

Mata Mata: As a good citizen of The Gambia, I thought each and everyone has a role to play in the socio-economic development And because   I’ve been working with women’s groups like Bafrow, I decided to open a cleansing company that can create employment for many women.

SHE SHE: How is your company helping women?

Mata Mata: It creates job opportunities for women as well as men and youths.

She She: In which way is it creating jobs for these people?

Mata Mata: By working with other institutions and companies like Civil Aviation, GPA, GCAA, British American Tobacco, Deloitte and Touche, GRTS (new building) to name a few, and recently we have been given a job by President Jammeh to clean the city of Banjul which was in fact carried out by men and women of my company.

She She: How many employers do you have?

Mata Mata: I have one hundred and two permanent staff.

She She: How is your company contributing to  national development?

Mata Mata: We are really contributing to national development, because we pay tax to government, we contribute to the national education levy, paying Social security for our staff and we also have a charity foundation for sick children apart from creating jobs for these one hundred and two people.

She She: What are the aims and objectives of your company?

Mata Mata: It is primarily to keep the whole country clean. As the saying goes, a healthy nation is a wealthy nation.

She She: What are your constraints, if any?

Mata Mata: Some of the constraints include the attitude of the people we are out to serve, e.g. when the president gives us work, we do our best to clean the place but you find the place gets dirty again even within a few hours. This happens to many places even at the Airport.

She She: What do you gain from your company?

Mata Mata: I make profit and I take some of the profit for the charity foundations and also help my family and relatives.

She She: What are your immediate plans?

Mata Mata: I’m planning to extend the company to laundry and dry cleaning services. At the moment we have trace (garbage) collection that we do for Medical Research Council (MRC); we have shops where we sell cleaning products; we also have carpet shampoo service.

She She: What advice do you have for women?

Mata Mata: My advice is for ladies to work hard and not to sit down or be lazy. We are lucky that our president and his government are empowering women so we should also take advantage of that; let us try to change our attitude, our dynamic president and his government have created top positions for women in this country like a female vice president, SOS, Solicitor-General, Judicial Secretary…you name it. All of these are women. Government have done their part, so it is left to us the women to do our part. In that connection  we should try and send our daughters to school as education is now at our door step. Government should consider giving loans to women as a majority of women especially those in the rural areas, don’t have access to loans. And this is unfortunate as we are missing the contribution of more women in national and local development.