98 NGOs registered, official says

The Gambia has 98 officially recognised non-governmental organisations, the deputy director of the country’s NGO Affairs Agency, Jerreh Sanyang, told IRIN on Wednesday. He was responding to an article by ‘The Independent’ daily claiming that there were 250 registered NGOs and that public concern was mounting over the proliferation of “dubious charitable organisations and non-governmental organisations”. Sanyang said the registered NGOs, two-thirds of which are local, were closely monitored and operated in numerous sectors, especially agriculture, education and health. He said, however, that under a now defunct state body, The Advisory Committee for the Coordination of NGOs, the country had had 145 official NGOs. That number was reduced when his agency was set up in 1996 and established stricter registration criteria that prevented many from gaining official NGO status, he added. Proliferation of NGOs “is not a big problem”, Sanyang said. However, he said his agency was closely monitoring and overseeing the organisations’ work in the country so to prevent negative publicity for the NGO community and to enhance public confidence in their humanitarian work.