By Binta Jaiteh
The National Assembly committee on public enterprise committee has adjourned session as National Environmental Agency governing authority failed to appear.
Meanwhile, lawmakers asked NEA to present its activity report and financial statement of year ended 31st December 2017, 2018, 2019 today at 1pm respectively.
Honorable Halifa Sallah, chairperson of the public enterprise committee, said: “the public enterprise must have a governing body and shall be appointed by the government after consultation with the public service commission. In essence there should be a governing authority since the act was enacted in 1994 one can see that it may not necessarily tally with the requirement of the 1997 constitution and there should be a review in that regard.”
“The governing authority is high powered, president and ministers so is the whole crème of the executive. The council shall consist of the following under section (7) the council shall be a policy making organ of the agency, coordinate all policies whether by government or private sector which are likely to have a significant impact on the environment,” he said.
He went on, the council is the governing authority and because of that, it is the authority that should appear before the national assembly and the agency will accompany them, adding “it may direct the agency or body in the agency to present the activity report of activity report and financial.”
“Even if the committee allowed it that is not what should happen, we dealing with a governing authority and the committee is not empowered to deal with anybody but the governing authority otherwise it will not be legitimate under normal circumstances we should not proceed since the governing authority is absent,” he added.
Doudu Trawally, executive director noted that, NEA is 25 years old, during this period there is a subcommittee called Ministry and Finance Committee that serves essentially as board for the institution adding that last time they appeared in May.
“The council was not meeting in the first place, but we managed to have our first meeting last year November 25th. And we scheduled to meet regularly, January 26th last month it never occurred we will make sure that it become a regular thing and the council will take its position. Because I said there has never been a meeting, so we have decided among us and agreed under the finance committee level whatever functions are there the council will be handled by the admin or finance,” he said.