Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Prime Minister, Omar Razzaz stressed the importance of the role played by the Legislation and Opinion Bureau (LOB) in drafting bills, regulations and defense orders with the "required speed and accuracy."

The premier made the remarks as he paid a visit to the LOB headquarters Wednesday morning, pointing out that the 16 defense orders that were so far issued dealt with the social protection network, citizen’s health, and protection of economic facilities and workers.

Highlighting LOB's contribution to draft legislations, Razzaz expressed his pride in the LOB's "prominent" role to protect public money and the citizen's health, adding these bills will be endorsed by the upcoming Parliament, primarily the Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing Law and the Illicit Gains Law, which include articles to monitor any unjustified wealth bloating periodically.

According to Razzaz, bills endorsed also aimed to strengthen the independence of two main institutions in protecting public money, namely the Audit Bureau and the Jordan Integrity and Anti-Corruption Commission (JIACC), stressing that these legislations will ensure the protection of public money in terms of legislative, executive and supervisory aspects.

Referring to the draft Quality and Consumer Protection Law of 2020, approved a few days ago, he noted the Covid-19 pandemic proved that Jordan has "effective" monitoring institutions in protecting consumer health and quality of goods and products.

However, he said simultaneously some gaps and conflicts emerged in the responsibilities of different parties, which required reviewing the action mechanism, and bringing a group of institutions under a unified umbrella to protect consumers' health, and price competitiveness, to avoid monopolizing the commodities in the local market.

Attended by the Prime Minister, the new LOB's website was launched, www.lob.gov.jo, which was developed to computerize and categorize all legislation in the Kingdom, allow the public interactivity, and receive citizen comments on draft legislations that are displayed online for a period of not less than 10 days.

The new site provides professionals, interested people and the public free access to legislative content and various stages to endorse legislations through a quick search mechanism to browse information easily.
During the launch ceremony, Razzaz stressed the importance of the bureau's new website in conveying information to citizens, whether related to judicial rulings or legislation approved, or others under preparation, and the possibility to receive feedback in a way that contributes to enriching the legislative outcome.

In turn, head of the LOB, Fida'a Hammoud, said number of legislations endorsed during the current government has reached 423, including 91 laws and 332 bylaws, adding the new website is the only official portal to browse the LOB's legislative work.