Abdou Karim Savage, the Chief Justice of The Gambia, last Thursday, launched a D50 million Legal Capacity Building Programme (LCBP) at a ceremony held at the Corinthia Atlantic Hotel in Banjul.

The Legal Capacity Building Programme is a three-year project sponsored by the Department for International Development (DFID) under the UK government. The programme, in the course of the three years, will render capacity building assistance to the judiciary, the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of State for Justice and The Gambia Bar Association.This is Phase Two of the Legal Capacity Building Programme.

Officially declaring the project launched, Chief Justice Savage said the judiciary’s main mission in society is to advocate the course of justice and the rule of law, ensure free, fair and speedy dispensation of justice by an independent judiciary through an efficient justice delivery system with highly trained and committed staff that will command the support and confidence of the people.

He added that The Gambia Government has adopted a legal sector strategy from  2007-2011 as part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), aimed at fighting poverty, realisation of Vision 2020 and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

“The sector strategy has seven key targeted areas such as institutional reform, human resource development, legal and regulatory framework, ICT, research and dissemination of legal information, infrastructure, and ADR among others,” he said.

Chief Justice Savage then thanked the sponsors on behalf of the entire judicial system of The Gambia and described the project as very timely considering the efforts of the judiciary in improving on its delivery system.

For his part, Graham Simmons, the deputy British High Commissioner to The Gambia said the central focus of the UK government’s programmes in The Gambia is their commitment to support the implementation of the PRSP. He stated that the UK Department of International Development will provide up to £1,675,000 (one million, six hundred and seventy five thousand pounds) on grant terms to support the judiciary, the Department of State for Justice and The Gambia Bar Association. He reiterated their commitment towards strengthening The Gambia’s judiciary system.

Other speakers at the ceremony were Jainabou Bah-Sambou, registrar general and representative of the Attorney General and SoS for Justice, and Sheriff Tambedou, vice president of The Gambia Bar Association among others.

The event was also followed by a presentation of the project by the project management team.

A D50m capacity building programme for the judiciary was launched on yesterday at the Corinthia Atlantic Hotel in Banjul.

The project, to be funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), UK, is to last for the next three years.

In his remarks at the occasion the British Deputy High Commissioner, Mr Graham Simmons, said the Legal Capacity Building Programme (LCBP) phase II is a programme supported by the UK Department for the International Development (DFID) founding of 1.675m pounds sterling. He said that the goal of LCBP II is to improve the impartiality, efficiency and accessibility of Gambian judicial system, with emphasis both on the use made of the system by the poor majority and on the need to strengthen the capacity of the professional and administrative staff in the Judiciary, Department of State for Justice and the Gambia Bar Association.

Mr Graham revealed that phase II will continue to provide similar range of institutional strengthening support as phase I included intensive capacity development through a combination of improvements in court management and programmes of staff development, mostly carried out on an in-service basis in The Gambia but also with limited opportunities for comparative study in Africa and regionally. In addition, he stated, phase II will continue co-financing with the commonwealth secretariat a judicial recruitment programme for High Court, Appeal Court and Supreme Court judges.

In his launching statement, the Gambian Chief Justice, Abdou Kareem Savage, said that this significant assistance from DFID is coming after the successful implementation of the first phase between 2004 and 2007. He said phase I had seen the accomplishment of many programmes in the area of institutional development and human capacity building. The second phase, he added, is a consolidation of the first phase and has come at the right moment, noting that the Judiciary is indeed going through defining moments when a lot is being done to position the judiciary to meet its development and growth challenges. He observed that the judiciary’s main challenge is its mission in society: “to advance the course of justice and the rule of law by ensuring free, fair and speedy dispensation of justice by an independent judiciary and efficient justice system with highly trained and committed staff that command the support and confidence of the people.”

Civil servants in The Gambia may start to reap more benefits for their labour when the development initiatives outlined by a World Bank draft report and a Public Service Reform Sector Strategy Paper are fully recommended and implemented by the government.

The World Bank report, which was evaluated and discussed at a two-day workshop at the Corinthia Atlantic Hotel in Banjul by participants from the public service sector, World Bank, DfID and the UNDP, was undertaken as a study by the World Bank in response to government’s request submitted in January 2007 for a comprehensive capacity assessment in the Public Service Sector, including the pension system.

The report proposes salaries and pension benefits (excluding the 20% salary increase across the board recently authorised by His Excellency the President) to strengthen payroll, establishment control, human resource management and training.

"The purpose of this workshop, in our view, is to critically examine and review the analytic study done by the World Bank/AfDB particularly in the area of Salaries, Allowances and Pension Reform," said the permanent secretary at the Personnel Management Office, Omar G. Sallah, while delivering a statement at the opening ceremony of the workshop on Tuesday.

He said the study should be viewed as a joint one on the basis that most of its "preliminary observations and data are the product of a joint consultations with the Mission [of World Bank] and a Gambian Technical Team" set up for the purpose since 2006.

"The issues highlighted in the data inter alia pointed to deficiencies in government effectives (52% in 2002 to 31% in 2005); quality of service (44% in 2002 to 38% in 2005) and anti-corruption (50% in 2002 to 30% in 2005)," Mr Sallah said.

He added: "The negative trend therefore confirmed the need for a comprehensive reform to enhance efficiency and effective service delivery. It is in this regard, that initiatives were bolstered, through further consultations and workshops for a comprehensive strategy.

"The results of these interventions and consultations were the product of the Public Service Reform Sector Strategy Paper (PSRSSP 2007 – 2011), one of the main components of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSPII 2007 – 2011) submitted to the Bank in January 2007."

PS Sallah further noted that the PSRSSP, which has a total cost package of US$7.5M (excluding salaries, allowances, wages and pensions), focused on four key areas of civil service reform. These, he explained, included improvement of the remuneration package, including Pension Reform to motivate and minimize attrition; strengthening institutional capacity for policy formulation; promotion of ethical values to ensure transparency, accountability and the induction of meritocracy into the service, and development of capacity at the local level for an effective and successful decentralisation of government activities and functions.

The sector strategy, he also said, broadly covers subjects such as Compensation and Benefits, Institutional Capacity Factors, and Governance and Management Factors.

In his keynote address, the Secretary of State for Finance and Economic Affairs, Hon. Mousa Bala Gaye, told participants at the workshop that their main task would be to evaluate and discuss the World Bank study or report and "not to make recommendations.

"Government has to take its time to constitute a taskforce that will review and assess the study in greater detail with a view to making recommendations to the Office of the President which will bring a paper to Cabinet that Cabinet will consider," Hon Bala Gaye told the participants, adding that the Public Service Reform Strategy funded by the UNDP and the civil service reform programme prepared by the World Bank, the African Development Fund and DfID should have been submitted to government since last year.

He explained: "Over the last five years government has been very much concerned with the reform of the civil service. It has taken considerable time to submit these reports to government. We have been working on this. We thought these reports were going to be submitted in June or July of last year.

I wanted the reports to be submitted in November or December last year, it was not possible. The reports are only submitted now."

He said his agreement with the World Bank was to hold two workshops one of which would be to present and explain the civil service programme.  

"I wanted to put this challenge before the workshop. How can we consider, jointly, the UNDP funded civil service reform strategy and also the World Bank-DfiD civil service reform programme study, because I do not want government to be approached with recommendations of the strategy and for decisions to be taken on that in the absence of a consideration of the recommendations of the civil service reform programme study?" he posited, adding:

"Let us try to consider the two documents together and make unified joint recommendations to government on a comprehensive civil service reform programme."

The second issue is on pension, he said. "What we have been seeing is that we have a lot of contributory pension schemes in government which has resulted in very low monthly pensions’ payment for our retired civil servants," the Finance SoS stressed, noting that the "highest monthly pension in this country is about three thousand dalasis a month", while the majority of retired civil servants are receiving less than fifty percent of this amount.

"We have over 800 people having pensions of D 100 and the scale goes on. The people in the D2,000 scale bracket are very few," he said, while noting that the government spent over D200 million in one year in respect of the recent 20% salary increase.

The World Bank Country economist in The Gambia, Mr Hoon Soh, said that although the civil service reform is a difficult and long-term endeavour but the World Bank would continue to support its proper reform process for the benefit of the civil service sector and the Government of The Gambia.

"Civil Service reform has become imperative in The Gambia due to the need to develop an effective and results-oriented civil service to prop the implementation of the country’s development strategy and plans in a sustainable manner," noted the UNDP Resident Representative in The Gambia, Mr Vitalie Muntean, in his remarks on the occasion.

Editor,

I am a Gambian residing in England with a masters degree in development studies, and have lately been thinking of coming back home to work. However , I am finding it difficult to access job adverts in The Gambia, thus wondering if there is any chance of accessing such information through your reputable newspaper online.
Ms Ammie Sanneh
UK

Editor’s Note:

Hello Amie, it is always good to hear of educated people wanting to come back home to work. Daily Observer has been thinking about making local job advertisements accessible to readers abroad, and we will see what we can do in the new year.

In the meantime, I suggest you start by sending your CV to the various institutions and employers in the country. I spoke to the UK High Commissioner here and he suggested that you could check to see if there are professional organisations in your field who may subsidise a returning African – I think one of them may be the International Organisation for Migration in London. I am not sure whether the British Government’s DFID may not have such an assistance programme, but check with them.  If they haven’t, they should! Good luck - a happy new year!