By: Kebba AF Touray
The Gambia Revenue Authority GRA, with financial support from the United Nations Development Program UNDP, commenced a three day activity to develop Custom Educational Materials.
The training activity brought participants from Customs and other units under the GRA, held at a local hotel in Senegambia.
Joseph Njie, Deputy Commissioner in charge of Technical Support and Monetary matters under Customs, welcomed the participants to the Educational Materials Forum, aimed to better inform the public on the works of GRA, and their roles and responsibilities; that sometimes people are not aware of what their mandate; but that coming up with this educational material or brochures, will help sensitize the public on their mandates and roles and responsibilities.
He applauded the UNDP for the initiative and expressed the hope that at the end of the training, they will be able to gather tangible information which GRA can use as a working tool.
Yayha Manneh, Deputy Director of Policy, Planning and Research at GRA, said this was the second edition of the training activity to develop information brochures on Customs Administration; that Customs is about a process which focuses among others, on clearance processes, offences under the Customs Acts, and restricted or prohibited goods; that the materials will be used for illustration, to enable the lay man understand what Customs is all about.
“The objectives at the end of the day, is to have a dash of all the brochure, and those arrears that concerns the authority, such as what constitute an offence under the Customs Act, and also Customs clearance processes,” he said.
Nuha Nyassi, Project Coordinator at the UNDP, expressed appreciation on behalf of the Coordination Unit under the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs; that the training is part of series of activities financed and supported by the UNDP, with the aim of supporting national institutions in Economic Planning, and basic budgeting, which is one of their key implementing partners.
In his official opening Director of Technical Services at GRA, Malamin Sanyang commended the UNDP for supporting these activities through the Finance Ministry.
“This is a rare opportunity to have this kind of forum. I want to extend sincere appreciation to the director for supporting us. I would like to advise participants to make the best user of the forum because of its importance.”
