The United Nations Population Fund (UNFP) in conjunction with its stakeholders recently held it's  annual review and planning meeting for the 2007 and 2008 at the Tendaba camp, Lower River Region.

Speaking at the occasion, Fatou Jassy-Kuyateh, permanent secreatary, office of the Vice President said the meeting served as a forum to clear differences and misunderstanding among stakeholders on pertinent  issues inoder to create a way for, to a successful programme implementation. 

"As we strive  towards realizing the dreams of a Silicon Valley, striking a balance between population growth and socio-economic development still remains a concern for the government of The Gambia", she noted.

According to her, the sixth programme of action seeks to contirbute to the improvement of the quality of life and standard of living of the peple of The Gambia.

She reiterated that the success of the programme will further reinforce the gains The Gambia registered towards the attainment of the Mellennium Development Goals. She added that despite the achievements, The Gambia is still faced with series of demographic challenges such as high population growth, rapid urbanisation and environmental degradation, which according to her constitute major impediment to achieving a higher quality of life for the peolple. She equally commended UNFPA  for its asisstance .

Dr Ruben Mboge, UNFP asisstant representative said whilst there is an overall increase in the allocation and distribution of funds to three components to follow the same pattern as stipulated in the country programme document, the resource allocation to vraious implementing partners is based on the same considerations used last year. He noted that more resources will be allocated for regional and grassroot interventions especially where interventions and structures are weak adding that efforts should be made to strengthen their capacities.

"Two UN volunteers with expertise in the operations, monitoring and evaluation of programmes were recruited last year to provide support to the NPCS. I must say that now we are begining to see the added value they are bringing into the programme coordination", he observed.

For  his part,  Momodou Soma Jobe,  Governor of Lower River Region thanked the population secretariat and its partners for choosing his region to meet. He told the gathering that Lower River Region has been the favourate region for providng a platform for discusions on how the challenges posed by unfavourable demograhic situation could be tackled.

The LRR Governor said the importance of  the annual planing meeting cannot be over emphasised noting that it will avail particitpants the opportunity  to take stock of the previous year's experience in programme implementation for better palnning and result oriented implementation. "This shows how commited we are to ensuring that the ideals of the population programme are adhered to as a way to attaining the goals of vision 2020" he said.

He then implored UNFPA to keep up the spirit of partnership in their bid to achieve the national population goals.