Noreen Sitali
WINDHOEK – The eight parliamentary standing committees of the 6th parliament met yesterday to reflect on the achievements and challenges as their tenure come to an end.
During the past five years, the parliamentary standing committees of the 6th parliament performed oversight in line with the Constitution of the Republic in particular Article 59 and Article 63 (2) (f) and the Standing Rules and Orders of the National Assembly, by conducting oversight on the programmes and activities of the line ministries, offices and agencies, including state-owned enterprises and statutory bodies.
“During our tenure as the 6th parliament under operational activities we attended to thirty-nine Bills tabled; fifteen Bills were passed with amendments; thirteen were reconsidered with the National Council; eighteen international instruments were tabled; twenty-nine motions were referred to standing committees; four motions were withdrawn; three motions were rejected and two motions were redirected to be dealt with by the Minister while one motion was ruled out of order,” stated the chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Mike Kavekotora, who spoke on behalf of all eight committees.
He highlighted some of the hearings conducted country-wide and the investigations carried out, with some leading to reviewing policies such as the one on Prevention and Management of Learners’ Pregnancies as a result of their findings and recommendations.
Another was an intervention by the committees of the 6th session on the Namibian Student Assistance Fund (NSFAF) that led to the review of the entire fund.
On an international level, Kavekotora highlighted that the committees through the Permanent Delegation assigned to the meetings of the ACP-EU were nominated to table a motion on behalf of Namibia on Sustainable Industrialisation and Digitalisation and the report was adopted in December 2019 at the 38th session of the ACP-EU JPA held in Kigali, Rwanda.
Kavekotora shed some light on some of the challenges faced by the committees such as lack of institutionalised mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the work done at committee level and the non-automatic referrals of Bills to committees, amongst other challenges.
He collectively thanked all stakeholders including the general public at different platforms for their support and confidence during the last five years.
The work of the parliamentary standing committees will continue under the 7th parliament with new members coming in and some old ones remaining to continue with the work of the respective committees.
*Noreen Sitali is an information officer at the National Assembly, Division: Research, Information, Publication and Editorial
Services.