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By Godfrey Olukya 12-12-2012
The Secretary General of the East African Community Dr Richard Sezibera has called for collective efforts to successfully implement the Common Market Protocol in the Partner States.
The community comprises of 5 countries, namely Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda
Burundi and Uganda.
Opening the first EAC Secretary General’s Forum of Civil Society Organisations and the Private Sector today, Seziebra said that Common Market’s realization would take a lot of hard work from all in order to achieve the intended results and reap envisioned mutual benefits. The Forum was to evaluate the implementation of the two-year Common Market Protocol.
‘In order to speed up the Common Market’s operationalization, Partner States would set up Implementation Committees and all stakeholders should fully them.’ he said.
The Secretary General also wanted the private sector to take the lead in fulfilling the Treaty’s requirement as the Community’s engine of growth, saying that the sector was wealth-creating and necessary to spin the economies of the Partner States. He noted one of the reasons which led to the collapse of the former EAC, was a lack of participation of the civil society and private sector.
Sezibera expressed his dissatisfaction over the slow involvement of women in the economic and leadership positions and called for the need to reverse the trend.
‘We need more women in leadership positions involved in our activities,” he said, underlining that the region’s gender policy begged for improvement.
The Deputy Ambassador of Germany to the United Republic of Tanzania, Hans Koppel, said his country shares in the EAC’s vision of a prosperous, competitive, secure and politically united East Africa and will continue to support it.
END