By Binta Jaiteh
Edrissa Jarju has assured the commitment of the National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC) in maintaining gender sensitivity and upholding the rights of women and men in an equitable corporate environment.
Jarju made this remark on behalf of the managing director of NAWEC in observance of International Women’s Day organized by NAWEC’s Gender Committee in partnership with MBOOLO Association under the Gambia Electricity Restoration Modernization Project (ERMP).
“I assure you of the management’s continuous support. This is a great sense of satisfaction that through our gender program and action plan recently, we are positively changing the lives of so many young ladies who are beneficiaries of our scholarship program,” he said.
He continued: “As we celebrate work and contribution of women today, we get ourselves treated with the exhibition of skills and know -how young women further gender intervention promotes progressive human values of empowerment and non -discrimination, equity, dignity among others.”
NAWEC, he said has paved the way for other institutions to emulate and also their gender policy is in line with the constitution of the Gambia, National Gender Policy, and ECOWAS Policy for gender mainstreaming in energy access among a host of national and international legal instruments.
He noted that NAWEC has undergone an important reform process aimed at enhancing corporate performance for reliable and efficient delivery of energy and water service.
Haddy Njie, Director of Project Intervention Unit emphasised the importance of celebrating IWD saying, commemorating this day is important and a key activity of GERMP component 3 which finances the institutional support to water, electricity, and capacity building .
“NAWEC has an established gender committee which is responsible for gender implementation planning. The overall development objective of the GERMP Project is to improve the operational performance of NAWEC and its capacity to dispatch variable energy which is in line with the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day that is Innovation and Technology for Gender Equity,”