By Mariam Williams
The National Environment Agency (NEA) has certified 40 Environmental Inspectors who underwent a week-long training on basic enforcement of law, at a ceremony held at the NEA head office in Kanifing.
Hon. Lamin Dibba, Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Natural Resources (MECCNAR), told the participants that, environment is such an important sector that their livelihood depend on it, cautioning that failure to take proper care of the environment has lot of implications health wise, economic wise, and also has a lot of implications for the communities.
He reminded the authorities concerned of their responsibilities towards the populace, stating that, they, including himself, are entrusted with the responsibility to protect the population and the environment from hazards, “and in doing that, you are mandated by law to do your work”.
The country’s Environment Ministry boss hailed the training as “very important and timely”, coming at a time when {some} people thought that when one government formulates a law, if the other government comes into being, that law would not be considered.
Dibba described that notion as “a fallacy because State continues and whatever the State does, it goes into to the next generations, unless the legal instrument is amended by the same process that put it in place”. In the absence of any amendments to any of those laws, in particular, the ban on plastic bags, they are still existing laws of the country, as indicated.
He also said the training is timely for the participants to be alive to their responsibility and know how to execute their functions at all levels.
However, Hon. Dibba had enjoined the participants to be very strong in their work since their role is to identify potential dangers to the existing environment within the remit of the law. He thanked the management of NEA for coming up with such an initiative to train Inspectors to enhance their skills in doing their job and also to enhance their knowledge in environmental laws.
Mr. Dodou Trawally, Executive Director of NEA, explained that his Agency is a regulated institution, dealing with laws, particularly the environmental laws.
“We enforce and participate in court matters, related to issues of regulations; that’s why we think it is important to train our these 40 environmental Inspectors because these are the staff that deal with enforcement of law. So, we think is very key to train them on basic enforcement of law”.
Director Trawally said they develop a training manual in partnership with experts in the area, and the training was also done successfully in partnership with the Gambia Police Force which allocated a trainer from the Police Training School; and the Judiciary also provided them with an expert, at least, to update and train the participants on basic performance…on evidence taking and in anything that had to do with law enforcement. He said they are hoping to have a similar training, come next year.
Speaking at the ceremony, Mr. Omar Bah, Register of Exercise at NEA recalled a week-long training earlier this month that was conducted in Jenoi, LRR. He said the meeting was meant to capacitize the Inspectors, which would enhance their enforcement capacities, adding that as Inspectors, they are required to enforce the existing laws.
Bah justified that in order to be able to enforce law effectively, the Inspectors need to be capacitized, adding that’s the reason why they organised a long week training for their various inspectors so as to be well knowledgeable on basic enforcement of law.
According to him, the training was done in collaboration with other institutions that have a stake in law, like the Gambia Police Force and other security institutions in the country.
The certification of the inspectors was to show that they are capable to enforce environmental laws more than before, as deduced from Bah’s statement.
