By Momodou Jarju
The Public Enterprise Committee (PEC) of the National Assembly has on Monday accepted the extension request made by the Drug Law Enforcement Agency of The Gambia (DLEAG).
The drug agency was supposed to present its activity report and financial statement for the period under review, 2017 and 2018 respectively.
A Board Member of DLEAG and the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Interior, Mr. Assan Tangara, said the request for their engagement to be rescheduled was based on two conditions.
The first reason is the audit office has just completed their audit exercise and is finalizing their report. Two, GPPA, that’s the Gambia Public Procurement Authority is scheduled to visit the DLEAG for a compliance review exercise. The date is scheduled from the 16th to 21st of March, Tangara explained.
In this regard, Mr. Tangara pleaded with the select committee to consider their request until these two impeding reasons are addressed. DLEAG officials said they would be able to reappear before the committee within three weeks.
The Select Committee accepted the request of the agency and the vice chairperson of the committee, Alagie Jawara told the agency that they have the power to grant them the request.
However, he reminded them about the due date for the submission of 2017 and 2018 reports to end the backlog which is set for on or before 31 March 2020, for 2019 activity report and financial statement to be submitted as well. He also said the ending of all backlog is on or before 31 August 2020.
Meanwhile, the sitting between the Gambia Printing and Publishing Corporation (GPPC) with the Select Committee was also rescheduled to today, Tuesday, at 2pm for presentation. The Corporation was supposed to present its activity reports and financial statements for the year under review 2017 and 2018 respectively.
The Chairperson of the Select Committee, Halifa Sallah, said the Corporation said they want to request the Corporation to allow them to go through the reports.
Managing Director of GPPC, Momodou Ceesay, accepted the request of the committee to allow them to go through the reports that were sent to them in that very morning.
“We are very comfortable with that. We can allow you the members to have time to look at the reports and we do the presentation tomorrow,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chairperson Sallah informed the Corporation that they have asked the public enterprises to try as much as possible to adhere to the due date to submit the 2019 reports in an effort to end the backlog. He said the deadline is 31th March 2020, for the submission of the activity report and financial statement for the year ended 31 December, 2019.
Also, MD Ceesay informed the committee that the GPPA compliance report is not ready yet. Salllah informed him that the absence of the report will not impede the presentation process of the oversight function.
The only impediment of the presentation exercise would be the absence of board and management of enterprises, the absence of external auditors and the absence of activity report, financial statement and management letter of the enterprises set to do presentation.
