By Sainabou Sambou
Madi Ceesay, United Democratic Party NAM for Serekunda West Constituency and chairman of the parliamentary committee on human rights and constitutional matters has said that the issues of resource constraints shouldn’t be an excuse by government to implement the TRRC recommendations.
In an interview with West Coast Radio’s Coffee Time program on Tuesday 28 June 2022, Madi said they have invited the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Dawda A Jallow, to brief the committee on the TRRC recommendations and other constitutional and human rights issues.
He stated that they asked the Justice Minister about the situation of the TRRC recommendations, in which the Justice minister said they don’t have much resources to implement all the recommendations.
“He said they will handle some of the recommendations for now and will tackle the other ones as the time goes on. Our position as human right committee is that since the TRRC was set up by the government and it has done its investigation and came up with recommendations, the government should make sure all the recommendations are implemented,” he explained.
Hon. Ceesay added that the Minister further told them that the position of his ministry is to see whether they can get resources for the implementation of some recommendations while the others can wait as they solicit budgetary support for the implementation of the other recommendations.
The member of parliament noted that the recommendations should be fully implemented because there are victims of atrocities.
“The recommendations should be implemented no matter the amount. If it cost us any amount as members of the human rights committee and the rest of the parliamentarian, we will not hesitate to approve a budget so that the TRRC recommendations will be implemented,” he emphasized.
“There are victims that should at least be compensated. Government should do all that it takes to compensate those victims. The Ministry of Justice and the parliamentary human right committee will work together to make sure that the recommendations are carried out.”
