After the successful implementation of cash transfer to 4,155 households in three regions affected by drought, the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) under the Office of the Vice President, together with African Risk Capacity(ARC), conveyed a payout ceremony and a lesson learned session at the National Nutrition Agency on Thursday 26 October 2023 to delineate the process as it relates to timeliness of response, appropriateness, capacity and delivery mechanisms among others, to integrate the results into future financial implementation planning.
The ceremony brought together 40 people including beneficiaries from the three regions - LRR, NBR, and URR, policy institutions or ministries, government agencies, partner support institutions of the payout, UN agencies, National and International NGOs, Academic and project institutions and private sectors.
In his remarks, Mawdo Amadou Jallow, project resource coordinator, explained that after analyzing the implementation plan and rolling out the cash transfer they had completed the first target set for 1,758 individuals. He said they had surpassed that number because they actually reached 97% of the initial target culminating to about 26,000 people.
With additional funds, he said, they intended to roll out for additional 300 households to bring the number to the actual target, to show that the project had been well managed.
Jallow said the beneficiaries registered received the cash, except those who had issues with verification of names that did not correspond with the names that were registered.
“With the money kept, we intend to reach back new beneficiaries that will potentially benefit from it,” Jallow said, adding that the registration was completed and the regional coordinators had submitted the data to cover the remaining 3%.
“The importance of the process was community-based targeting, which was championed by World Food Program (WFP) with NDMA regional officers to carry out the process on different people and places,” he said.
Sanna A. Dahaba, Executive Director of NDMA, stated that the event was to do a postmortem on what they had achieved in terms of what they implemented and to evaluate and improve their efforts.
The Gambia has been persistent and consistent in the payout program since 2015, he added.
Bakoto Dampha, a beneficiary from Jarra Soma, expressed gratitude to the government for coming to their aid. She said the money given to her was highly beneficial, as it was also used to take care of some domestic consumption after she had faced difficulties in feeding her family and practising proper farming.
