By Olimatou Coker
Abdoulie Jadama, head of programs at Open Society Platform the Gambia (OSPG) has urged government and National Assembly to enact the Anti-corruption Bill.
Jadama made these remarks yesterday during a day long validation workshop of policy review and analysis of five key policies: National Budget, Public Finance Act 2014, Gender policy, National Development Plan and Public Procurement Act 2004, organized by OSPG funded by the NDI in collaboration with CSOs and government partners at a validation held at Metzy Residence.
“We at OSPG and partners are once again renewing our commitment and call on the government and National Assembly to act now, not later to enact the Anti-corruption Bill 2019 and operationalize the Access to Information Act into national binding laws to address corruption and fulfil the constitutional provision of right to information as enshrined in the 1997 Constitution,” he said.
The objective of the day long validation is to establish how gender was factored into the planning of the policy instruments.
Jadama said this initiative aims to share knowledge on the country’s current policy directions towards gender as a critical and important issue that forms core of the fiscal accountability and transparency reform challenges in the country.
The exercise also aims to identify local best and hybrid solutions to enhance good governance.
“We believe this will serve as an impetus to achieve our national development goals and international commitments such as UN Agenda 2030 and Africa Agenda 2065 anchoring on the fact that no one should be left behind in the democratic and transitional justice process initiated since in January 2017 after the downfall of Jammeh.”
He noted that the meeting is designed to support Government of the Gambia to take concrete steps to address some of the structural and policy challenges that will promote open governance in the Gambia such as gender mainstreaming in policy design, implementation as well as monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in the national development discourse. “It’s by no mistake a coalition of CSOs through the support of NDI initiated Gambia OGP Accelerator project to educate and mobilize large constituencies of reformers within and outside the government to achieve this laudable initiative. In turn, the outcomes can contribute to improve lives and livelihoods of the Gambian people.”
