By John Marrah
The National Gender Technical Working Group on Gender Statistics has on Wednesday 27th November concluded their maiden inaugural meeting and regional validation workshop for the technical working group members for the “MAKING EVERY WOMAN AND GIRL COUNT” project at the Statistics Conference Room in Freetown.
In his opening remarks, the Deputy Statistician General, Andrew Bob Johnny called on all members present to be committed and make necessary inputs into the Terms of Reference and help to validate the consultant, Ade Renner’s report and to further agree on the next steps for subsequent meetings.
Representative from UN Women, Baindu Massaquoi, a Programme Specialist stated that the UN Women’s flagship programme initiative “Making Every Woman and Girl Child Count”(MEWGCC) is aimed at a radical shift in the availability, accessibility and use of data and statistics on key aspects of gender equality and women empowerment in Sierra Leone.
On his part, the Project Consultant, Ade Renner mentioned that key things among outcome 1/3 in his presentation are to advocate for gender statistics to be systematically included in the all sector strategic plans for Statistics SL at National and District levels and Technical support to the Inter agency Committee on Gender Statistics.
Former Minority Leader of SLPP party in Parliament, Bernadette Lahai, applauded the initiative and maintained that she is committed to working with the group to ensure that their goals are achieved.
The workshop, during which several suggestions were made, was climaxed with the following resolutions which were agreed upon by participants:
-The TWG has been inaugurated as National TWG for Gender Statistics by DSG STATS SL
-STATS SL shall continue to Chair meetings
-Stats SL shall ensure that all relevant documents shall be circulated soon after the meeting
– Next meeting will be announced on the Group’s Whatsapp forum
-The TWG should start work forthwith and make all necessary contributions via e-mail to be set up by Mahawa Kondeh of and whatsapp to be set up by Salieu Jalloh of Stats SL.
