He urged National Assembly Member’s to embrace those ideals of social auditing.
Speaking at the recently-concluded NAMs’ regional outreach forum for electorate in Central and Upper Region region on the theme: ‘Social Audit of Gambian NAMs Representative, Oversight and Legislative Functions: A CSO Perspective’, Mr Njie, who led the civil society group at the outreach said: “Social auditing is a process of evaluating an organisation’s/institution’s operating procedures, code of conduct, and other factors to determine their effect on a society. The goal is to identify what actions of the organisation, if any, have impacted the society in some way.”
He said political will, enabling legislation, objectivity and independence and broader civil society participation are also key conditions for effective social audit initiatives.
“Social audit of national institutions may be defined as an in-depth scrutiny and analysis of the working of public institutions vis-à-vis their social relevance. Social audit is based on core shared values derived and updated through polyvocal, multi-directional consultations between stakeholder /citizenry and public officials and objective and impartial analysis of data/evidence is vital for credibility of social audits,” he added.
Speaking earlier on a different theme of “participatory budgetary process”, the deputy director of directorate of Budget at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Mr Lamin Fatty said the importance of budget participatory process cannot be over-emphasised as it promotes transparency, fosters accountability, good governance and increase social justice among others.
Mr Fatty said the government’s money is the people’s money adding that ‘the government’s revenue comes from the people through the taxes (income, sales, or property) and fees they pay. It comes from exploiting natural resources that are part of the national patrimony that belongs to the people. Even when revenue comes from loans, it is the people that will have to repay them in the end.’
Public funds are supposed to be spent on projects, he told CRR/URR NAMs and electorates in the island town of Jangjangbureh.
By Sainey Marenah
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