By Muhammad Bah The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly on Monday, 23rd March 2015, commenced training on accountability and oversight functions.In his remarks, Dr. Rasheed Draman, the Executive Director of African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs who is the resource person, told the participants that the training is to help the members of PAC to understand the basic issues of ‘Accountability and Oversight’. He said the training is also designed to help them understand best practices for PAC work across the globe. Dr. Draman noted that the PAC members must be familiar with the basic concepts in Public Sector Accounting which are useful to make them understand the Accountant General’s report. He noted that the training is also aimed at helping the parliamentarians to understand the issues to focus on when reviewing the Accountant General’s report. He said parliaments across the continent are criticised for skipping the most thriving issues when performing their oversight, legislative and accountability duties. In his opening statement, the chairman of the Public Accounts and Public Enterprises Committee (PAC/PEC) and the speaker of the National Assembly, Hon. Abdoulie Bojang, welcomed all participants to the five day training workshop. He said the training is funded by the African Development Bank (ADB) under the Institutional Support Project and Financial Governance, adding that the project has been supporting the PAC/PEC in capacity building programs over the last three years, including the National Assembly’s participation to WAAPAC and SADCOPAC conferences. He said as people’s representative it is their responsibility to ensure that government and its public services, institutions and agencies are all accountable to the Gambian tax-payers.]]>
