FOROYAA Newspaper (Serrekunda)
Isatou Bittaye
4 April 2008
The National Assembly Member for Wuli West, Honourable Sidia Jatta, has tasked the assembly to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate some of the Area Councils in the country.
Sidia made this statement at the National Assembly, on Tuesday, during the debate on the speech made by the president at the National Assembly. He said most of the Area Councils are collecting taxes from the people, but rendering no services, especially the Basse Area Council. Honourable Jatta noted that decentralization is not taking place, as the Area Councils are just there for themselves, adding that they are not rendering any services to the tax payers. He indicated that for the Basse Area Council, he will tell his constituency not to pay any tax to them and they (the constituency) will identify their own tax collectors in order for the taxes collected to be put into good use for the benefit of the community.
On agriculture, Sidia said that poverty can only be eradicated by marketing farmers' produce. He asserted that though the last rainy season was poor, his area has cultivated lot of groundnuts but which are still not bought. He said groundnut is the only means of getting foreign exchange as tourism cannot be sustain because of competition. He said farmers' groundnut should be disposed off, noting that through this, poverty can be reduced. He proposed for the Assembly to set up a Committee to be responsible for the marketing of groundnuts.
Hon Jatta also suggested for the establishment of a Committee on the African Parliament to be called the Inter-Africa Committee for Integration, instead of having Committee of Friendship. "They cannot have Committees of Friendship for all African countries". He also called for the Secretaries State to be present in the National Assembly sittings as they are debating on a policy documents which affect them. He argued that policy documents should be discussed with the ministers for the implementation plans because they are also involved in the implementation process. He said that all the Secretaries of State are answerable to the people and should be present in the Assembly to discuss matters under their purview.
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