THE Tanganyika Law Society (TLS) has underlined the importance of public participation in giving views and recommendations during crafting of bills and policies.
TLS Executive Director Advocate Kaleb Gamaya gave the plea over the weekend during a training to build capacity among faith-based leaders.
Adv Gamaya said it has come to their attention that the public has been complaining when the Parliament passes laws while they had not participating in the public hearing to air their views and recommendations.
“The public must know that they are the ones making the law, the National Assembly just passes the bills which have been submitted after engaging views and recommendations from stakeholders to become an act,” he insisted.
He said the religious leaders have big number of followers, therefore the TLS has decided to train them on how the public could participate in the process before the bills are tabled in the parliament.
“We believe that religious leaders have a great role to play to educate your believers so that they could fully participate in the process and stop blaming the government for having in place laws not in their favour while they are given opportunity to participate but they do not use it,” said TLS Executive Director.
He said the TLS has decided to equip the religious leaders with law making process awareness so that they increase public participation by attending the public hearing sessions as announced by the responsible parliamentary standing committee.
Speaking during the training, Mr Othman Zuberi, secretary general of the Muslims Council of Tanzania (BAKWATA) youth wing, said the training helped him understand the importance of participating in public hearing sessions.
Mr Zuberi said he will be a good ambassador to raise awareness on the need to participate and give views and recommendations which will be used to improve the law.
For his part, Rev John Bunyan, commended the TLS for the capacity building training, saying it had come at the right time since there were number of amendments which needed public hearing.
