Daniel Terungwa

The Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC) Mr. Ousman Mohammed Cham, has informed the Public Enterprise Committee (PEC) that the company is geared towards providing effective and efficient service to the populace.
He informed the Parliamentarians recently during their appearance before the committee, for the presentation of their activity reports and financial statements, for scrutiny and consideration.
Mr Cham said the NAWEC Board, is fully aware of its multiple accountability requirements, to both the Executive, Legislative and to their customers and it is committed towards providing services and contributing to the economic development of the country.
“In response to these requirements, we have undertaken great strikes to bring right kind of competences to NAWEC, to improve our efficiency and effectiveness, to solve the dis-service provision to the people of the Gambia,” he said.
The Chairperson also said NAWEC had promised the PEC that the backlog of the said report was to be cleared before 2021, but unfortunately, COVID-19 struck and has derailed the preparation process, thus it had no alternative but submit their 2020 Financial Statement, while the Activity Report was pending.
NAWEC averred that this had given them a lot of challenges in terms of meeting the deadline, to the External Auditors to submit some of the documentations that they required from the management, but added their report would be finalized and submitted to the committee.
It said: “we might not be able to submit our 2019 audited account before end June. Is a serious challenge and we understood that the report should have been submitted last week but we are doing everything possible to complete the backlog, and have a fresh start with 2022 that would be on track without backlogs”.
Chairperson of the Committee, Halifa Sallah, told the management and Board that their restriction is that they would start session starting on the 22nd of March 2021, thus they need at least a period of three weeks to write their reports.
“We cannot also prolong otherwise we will be inefficient. We listen very carefully to views expressed by the public enterprises, and we have gauged their performance against the provisions establishing their manner of operations,” he said.
He said with respect to the audited accounts, section 39 of the public enterprise act states that, the accounts of the corporations shall be audited annually by the auditor general, and the audited accounts of the public enterprises should form part of the Auditor General’s overall annual reports to the National Assembly.
“What we have seen is that corporations have been trying to tidy up their accounts and that is really not the objective. The objective is to give true and fair state of operation, so that the challenges could be identified and recommendations made to move them to greater viability,” Sallah said.
NAWEC Board and Management is to reappear before PEC, and submit their 2018 reports by 12th February 2021, and the report for the year ended 31st December 2019, no later than 29th March 2021.