The National Center for Civic Education presented for consideration and adoption activity reports and audited financial statements before the Finance and Public Accounts Committee and subject matter specialists in Banjul.
On activities conducted, the center embarked on a massive community sensitization on the dangers and effects of the pandemic with aim of minimizing the spread of the virus through the distribution of safety kits across rural Gambia. Intense engagement was equally held on the popularization of the Draft Constitution to enhance in all 7 regions of the Gambia to better ignite citizen political participation and understanding on critical trending issues surrounding them. On capacity building, series of capacity building trainings were conducted for staff in the working in the center during the peak of the conclusion stage of the Draft Constitution.
Similar engagements within rural Gambia were also held on local government authorities within the local regions to shed more light on their roles and responsibilities in line with the local government Act. The center has equally conducted civic engagements in respect of the 2021 By elections in Niamina West Constituency and Kerr Jarga Ward respectively.
The committee digging into the management letter and the submitted financial statements flagged issues of problems of classification, the maintenance of an updated cashbook, inadequate accountancy policy as per IPSAS standards, placing of refunds to their proper expenditure line, non-capital expenditure reported as capital expenditure, lack of transparency in the awarding of contracts specifically the contract on the review of the NCCE Act to grant autonomous status to the Center which didn’t conform to the procurement standards set by the Gambia Public Procurement Authority thus prompted the Committee to request for the evidence of a competitive bidding and all other relevant documents related to the contract.
The Committee equally raised the issue of numbering of payment vouchers as a result if which payment, withdrawals made may be seemingly impossible to trace to the individual responsible thus not inconformity with financial principles. The committee questioned why there were no comparative figures for the fiscal year 2019- 2020 subventions from the government.
The Compliance Report for 2017 and 2018, however rated the Center almost compliant pending the report of 2019 which is currently available. The Board of Governors of the center flagged the challenges the institution is faced with, notably; mobility, high cost of renting of the office space, limited subventions, other material resources to enable the office decentralize to expand their reach in hard to reach communities.