By Nyima Sillah
The National Assembly Select Committee member of Public Enterprise (PEC), Friday, endorsed the National Road Authority (NRA) activity report and financial statement 2018.
Prior approval of the reports, NRA first appeared before member of the Select Committee of Public Enterprise on Monday for scrutiny of its 2018 activity and financial statement 2018 reports.
Considering the reports, Honorable Halifa Sallah, Chairperson of the Public Enterprise Committee disclosed that prior the 1997 constitution, the public enterprises were not necessarily made accountable with a direct submission of their activity report and financial statement to the National Assembly. But he added that the Minister in charge of direction and control of Public Enterprise was mandated to submit an activity report and financial statement to the National Assembly on behalf of the Public Enterprise.
The essence of the exercise, he stated, is for the Committee of the National Assembly to promote efficiency, transparency and probity in all the undertakings of the Public Enterprise to ensure that the action is time bound.
According to him sub section 5 of the constitutional provision makes it mandatory that within three months of the end of the financial year of the Public Enterprise, the activity report and financial statement should be submitted.
Hon Sallah noted further that the public Enterprise act which under section 3 of the largest Public
Enterprise, is to operate as profitable as possible to ensure that they operate according to their mandate to the external log act and ensure that they employ more Gambian’s in order to facilitate the growth of such Institution.
“We have looked at the National Road Authority and we are convinced that its mandate may not necessarily be to provide profit to the government, but to provide essential service to institutions which facilitate the development of a productive place in the economy”, he said.
The Select Committee Chairperson went on that looking at the summary and introduction, they have been informed that the NRA did inform them that they have classified and unclassified roads, noting that it is important they take note of what they have told them that they have 3300km of classified roads, 27% is paid and 73% unpaid.
In this regard what they expected from the mandate is that road types must be classified so that they can know what the strategy objective is in order to move them forward.
However, the Committee members posed some questions to NRA concerning activities done in 2017 and 2018 including the amount spent on road maintenance, damage plus classified and unclassified roads, staff loan and others.
Hon Saikou Marrong, also member of the Committee put asked NRA if they are having sub plus of D29 million in 2017 while in 2018 they deposited D21 million what went wrong. He also asked urged the NRA to explain the differences between classified roads and unclassified roads. Crowning up his question he said there are some road constructions that are taking place within the country and it is not directly by NRA, instead by the ones that are sponsored by GAMWORK in partnership with local government thus a lot of money is spent on maintenance of the roads.
Replying to his questions, Momodou Senghore, Managing Director NRA stated that the amount of work done in 2018 was more than the work done in 2017, and the roads are classified in primary, secondary and feeder roads. While he explained that primary roads are the main roads from Brikamaba to Basse through Soma and the North Bank road of Barra to Laminkoto.
He went on to explain that the secondary roads are the Trans Gambia Mandinaba Siliti. Feeder roads or rural roads he said most of them have been engineered before 1st and 2nd Republic through the UN feeder roads program and tertiary roads are the unclassified and un-engineered ones.
In addition they also have urban roads in Serrekunda. He concluded that they want the PEC institution to do anything it can to make sure that NRA gets what it deserves, noting that road constructions should reside with the NRA.
