By Momodou Jarju
The chairperson of the Public Enterprise Committee, Halifa Sallah, yesterday expressed the need for public enterprises to clear their backlog. He made this remark during the PEC session of the National Assembly after the failure of appearance of the NAWEC’s board of directors and the submission of a consolidation of activity reports for 2017 and 2018 by GRTS.
Sallah said several other public enterprises had submitted their 2017 activity reports and financial statements and made an undertaking that by 15th or end of July 2019, the committee will receive their 2018 activity reports and financial statements.
Sallah said if the enterprises fail to submit their reports, their status would be tainted as non-compliant which is not good for their enterprises or agencies.
He said since members’ objective is to put an end to the backlog and they are convinced that the best way to achieve that is for GRTS to separate the activity report of 2017 from 2018 and present it as a stand-alone activity report.
“The financial statement for the year ended 31 December 2017 is already ready. What is important is to have the activity report for 2017,” he said.
The committee requested the GRTS board and management to prepare the 2017 reports and submit them so that they would schedule a day for them to return and present the 2017 reports.
GRTS officials responded in the positive, saying they would endeavour to submit their report latest Friday 7th June 2019, promising they would detach the 2017 activity report from the consolidated activity report.
NAWEC session with the Public Enterprise Committee could not hold yesterday due to the absence of their board of directors which is a requirement for any committee at the National Assembly to commence business.
Officials from NAWEC included the MD Baba Fatajo, Finance Director Ahmat S Cham and Commercial Director, Tijan Manneh.
The officials revealed that the chairperson of the board of directors of Nawec was unavailable due to his engagement in another board, as he was having a session at the time they were to present their reports and their auditors too were having an Annual General Meeting (AGM).
Hon. Sallah said the PEC exercise shows the desire to build a partnership and they are anticipating maximum collaboration from the public enterprises or agencies.
Meanwhile PEC sessions ended yesterday and will resume next month June 2019.
