By Omar Bah
The National Assembly Member for Kiang West, Lamin Ceesay, has clarified that his comments on the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) were meant to highlight that the funds should not be implemented by MPs or Assembly authorities as they are now. The CDF is an arrangement that allows a NAM to facilitate the spending of funds dedicated and directly earmarked for development projects in his or her constituency. NAMs receive up to D500,000. The MPs will identify projects and write proposals to the National Assembly explaining how they want to implement them and the amount involved.
Before, it was given to only elected NAMs, but now it has been extended to nominated members. The money is not given to NAMs in cash but through projects.
Addressing a seminar on accountability for the finance and Public Accounts and Public Enterprises committees of the National Assembly and relevant stakeholders on Wednesday at the parliament funded by the West Minister Foundation, WFD, Honourable Lamin Ceesay said the NA Members, due to their oversight functions, cannot be given responsibility to implement a budget.
“What I wanted to put across is that we should take the execution of the constituency development fund away from the National Assembly. My suggestion is that it should be executed by one of the ministries or the local councils so that the parliament would be able to scrutinise how the funds are expended to avoid conflicts of interest,” Ceesay said.
This, he added, will give the parliamentarians the opportunity to scrutinise the audit report on the funds as they do with other disbursed public funds to departments and agencies.
He said D500,000 cannot be given to NAMs without proper scrutiny.
“So, when it comes to transparency and accountability, the National Assembly cannot hold itself to account. You cannot approve a budget for yourself and at the same time scrutinise the same budget because you cannot humiliate yourself. It doesn’t happen anywhere and cannot happen in The Gambia,” he added.
He said the NAMs can be given the privilege to identify projects for intervention, but the execution should be done by another agency independent from the National Assembly.
He said that if the funds are implemented independently, lawmakers will be able to independently scrutinise and make sure that the funds are accounted for.
“Every single dalasi of public funds must be accounted for, but I cannot remember at any time when the National Assembly discussed these constituency funds. The idea is not to say it should be scrapped; I am even advocating for the funds to be increased to D1 million so that we would be able to cater for more projects,” he stated.
