By Kumba Leigh & Adam Colley
The Public Information Campaign (PIC) team from the Department of Information Services (DOIS) and the National Social Protection Secretariat (NSPS) last week convened meetings with Muslim and Christian leaders on The Gambia Social Registry (GamSR) and the ongoing household data collection exercise by the Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBoS). The team informed that this preliminary round of the Public Information Campaign on GamSR targets community and religious leaders. “As respected leaders and carriers of vital messages, Imams and Christian leaders are considered crucial agents of such social development campaigns,” Ebrima A Njie, Deputy Director, Department of Information Services and head of the PIC team, said.
Speaking at the meetings with the Imams and Christian leaders, both at the Gambia Supreme Islamic Council headquarters and NACCUG complex in Kanifing, Malang Jawo, Grievance Mechanism and Updates Officer, National Social Protection Secretariat, explained that in 2016 Government approved The Gambia Social Protection Policy which identifies a huge gap in the coordination of the social protection interventions in the country. The policy, he said, recommended a governance strategy to mainstreaming social protection for a sustainable social safety net for the poor and vulnerable people. This, Mr Jawo went on, includes setting up a social registry and a monitoring and evaluation tool to check and evaluate all social protection inventions, to make sure they are conducted appropriately.
He informed that the Social Registry exercise started in 2021 in the upcountry where it covered all the (9) districts in the rural Gambia. He said the objective of this campaign is to ensure nationwide coverage in the social registry in order to assist targeting, planning and support of individuals or beneficiaries when the needs arise. For his part, Deputy Director, Ebrima A. Njie of Department of Information Services, appealed to participants to disseminate the information, stressing the importance of the exercise. The National Social Protection Secretariat is the custodian of the Social Registry and the coordinator of the country’s social protection programmes.
