By Binta Jaiteh
The National Assembly members have adjourned debate on President Adama Barrow’s State of Nation Address speech due to lack of quorum.
Speaker Maryam Jack Denton, said on Wednesday : “as per clause (12) surplus (5) of the standing orders, the debate on the State of the Nation Address was supposed to continue yesterday as it was the business on the order paper but due to lack of quorum at the plenary we could not proceed and the assembly had to be adjourned.”
“The assembly business committee (ABC), conveyed and emergency meeting this morning and decided to adjourn the debate of nation address until further notice and equally agreed to only schedule the normal question for oral questions and answers by the Honorable Minister for petroleum and Energy,” she added.
“I wish to inform the assembly that the ABC in accordance with its mandate decided for the assembly to be adjourned till further notice after today sitting to allow time for some committees to finalize their internal report. As well as allowing her Excellency vice president to be rescheduled in order to attend a sitting for the conclusion of the debate of the SONA proper.
“Any event that is the third ordinary session will be adjourning (SINE and DIE) before September knowing that this is an abnormal year because is election year. I was made to understand that IEC has announced its calendar and it will be difficult to have a quorum,” she explained.
The Speaker cited clause (41) sub clause (1) and standing order (43) limits supplementary questions as a total of 7, 2 for the honorable member and 5 from amongst other members ‘therefore we will proceed with the petroleum.’
Meanwhile, Honorable Foday Drammeh, member for Tumana notified the minister to provide the assembly with the list of communities that will benefit in the electricity extension.
He said: “The minister replied that there are concrete plans regarding Tumana constituency adding that under the Gambia Electricity Restoration (GERM) project backbone phase 2 being tendered already the communities are as follows, Madina Samako, Sare Yorro, Tingtinjo, Kissi, Dandu, Keneba, Dinba, Tambasansang and Chamoi. Under extension there are more than 600 communities.”
He stated that the plan is to provide energy to every community but this is what is given to be as the master list, this are guaranteed project.