Babuaccar Jeng, General Manager of NACCUG, has said the holding of an Annual General Meeting is a legal requirement for all financial cooperative unions and can be described as the mirror of the society.
"This is where members exercise their ownership, authority and control of the co-operative society," he said. "Therefore, the AGM is expected to provide members of the credit union the opportunity to share their views on all issues to be discussed and also assess the performance of the board and management during the period under review."
Mr Jeng made these remarks while delivering a speech on the occasion of the 14th Annual General Meeting of the Gambia Teachers Union Cooperative Credit Union held at St Therese's Upper Basic School at the weekend.
The AGM should provide the board of directors the opportunity to receive feedback from members, which would help them map out the way forward for the development of the credit union, he said.
"As a financial cooperative owned, managed and controlled by the members, we must continue to emphasise that we are unique not-for-profit union and not a charity," he said. "We are expected to provide more flexible, convenient and reasonably priced financial and non-financial services to the members."For his part, Edrissa Bojang, Board Chairman, said: "Fifteen years of challenging circumstances with our resolve and determination to tackle head-on the menace of poverty that compelled us to do something, has in fact proved that we can fight and win against poverty."
In his remarks on the occasion, Siaka Bah, who represented the Governor of the Central Bank of The Gambia at the occasion, says micro-finance is widely recognised as one of the fundamental tools in the fight against poverty, "as it can empower poor people in improving their livelihood".
"The underlying fact here is that the micro-finance sector has the potential to fill the gap by serving the people," Mr Bah said.
