Month: July 2022

Minority Chief Whip Mohamed Muntaka Mubarak has lamented the practice in Ghana’s Parliament where lawmakers come to the House and they do not enter the chamber to register their names but will sit at the coffee shop.

According to him he does not want to mention names because such MPs do not even go for Committee meetings yet they will go and say they came to Parliament, “you know we have those challenges”.

“Let us have the biometric system where, when you enter through the entrance your bio is taken and the time you are leaving it is also taken and is able to record. My colleague Nitiwul was a deputy leader, when we said Committees should not sit before parliament itself sites they should wait for us to start sitting, so that they will come into the chamber when we start sitting before they go for their committee meetings, or if they start early and see the chamber has started they suspend let members come and register and go back and work to avoid “I was in a committee and mark absent”.

 And a lot of MPs want to take undue advantage of saying, ‘I have come, I am in my office, why should I be marked absent’; “come into the chamber, our standing orders says when we start and we do not have the numbers we have to close the House it is humiliating when we do not have the numbers to do business but the following day we have more than the numbers we required to do business”.

Mr. Muntaka further pointed out to the former deputy majority leader and Member of Parliament (MP) for Bimbilla that subsequent Speakers have ruled on the matter and there is no need going back to the same issue, because if you are not in the chamber you are marked absent.

And gave an example that he was at a Committee meeting and noticed there was work going on in the chamber, but it became necessary for him to be at the Committee meeting so he had to fill a form of absent in order not be marked absent.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

Member of Parliament (MP) for Bimbilla Bingab Aduna Dominic Nitiwul is advocating for lawmakers who attend Committee meetings for which reason they could not attend to proceedings in the chamber to be captured as being present in votes and proceedings of the House.

According to him MPs are being chastised by their constituents for being absent in the chamber whiles in fact they were present in the House attending to business of the House which equally is parliamentary duty, but when the votes and proceedings are presented they are marked as absent.

“Does it mean that until you enter this chamber you have not come to Parliament, if I am a member of the Finance Committee and they start their work at 9:00am and I come to work and for some reason Parliament sit for thirty minutes and I am unable to come to the plenary to register?”

The former deputy majority leader, pointed out on Friday July 22, 2022 queried that “when a  lawmaker is within the premises of Parliament working, are we saying that person did not come to Parliament for that day and has not done his work for his constituent to have a problem with him?”

Mr. Dominic Nitiwul emphasised on the need to take a second look at the issue since it is becoming a problem as Ghana’s Parliament takes its tradition from the British Parliament and sometimes when one observes their parliament on television only 6 MPs are working.

And he believes there are good reasons that those who attend Committee meetings their names are captured in the votes and proceedings as present, “why can’t we allow such people to be marked present as well?”

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

The Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament, Peter Nortsu-Kotoe said government would have to make a quick intervention to the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) to enable the council conduct these year’s WASSCE.

The Ranking at a press briefing in parliament on Friday, July 22, 2022 disclosed that WAEC is cash trapped as government is yet to release money to it. He stated that as at July 1 this year, the Ministry of Education and for that matter the government of Ghana owed WAEC a total of 23million Ghana Cedis, comprising arrears of GHC7,221,755 for the conduct of Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in 2021, as well as 15, GHC790,072 as areas for WASSE for the same year.

For this year, government is to release GHc96, 694,432.40 to WAEC for the conduct of WASSCE which starts from August 1 to September 27, 2022. But the government is yet to release any money to WAEC.
He said per their information, if WAEC is not provided at least 6million Ghana cedis before the first of August to start the practical and orals, they would be forced to postpone the examination.

Regrettably, he said the other four countries that constitute WAEC including Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia have all conducted their Examination for 2022 already and what we are going to write is ‘Ghana WASSCE’. He asserts that any situation that leads to the postponement of the examination has dire consequences on the candidates.

He also expressed worry of how the invigilators, script checkers and supervisors would bring themselves to working again since they have not been paid for last year’s job done. The Minority side of the Committee therefore called on government to as a matter of urgency release money to the council to conduct the examinations.

Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com

The Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) foreign reserves has declined from $9.7 billion to about $7.63 billion at the close of June 2022 and not to $3bilion as contained in the Finance Committees report on the $750million Loan Facility Agreement between the Government of Ghana and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) as approved by parliament. The Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Kwaku Kwarteng disclosed this on the floor of the House on Friday, July 22, 2022 when he sort to correct the error as contained in the Finance Committee’s Report for the Approval of the $750million AfreximBank loan.

The Chairman in a statement said “we reported that the international reserves of the Bank of Ghana had declined from US$9billion to US$3billion. Mr. Speaker, this was an error, it was an unfortunate oversight. According to the Bank of Ghana, the Gross International Reserves of the country was US$9.70 billion at the close of December 2021.

This declined to US7.68billion at the close of June 2022”.
In terms of net international reserves, he said “the country closed December 2021 with $6.08 billion. This position declined to $3.58 billion at the close of June 2022”. “Mr. Speaker, the error is regretted and I request the Clerk at Table to ensure that all the records are accordingly corrected,” he told the House, and apologized for the blunder.

The Minority however, raised strong objections at the decision of Mr Kwarteng to apologise and correct the earlier figures contained in the Finance Committee’s report. The Minority questioned the integrity of the entire House as it had approved the $750 million loan based on the alarming figures of the Central Bank’s reserves and the urgent need to support the 2022 budget.

Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, the Ranking Member of the Finance Committee said he was not privy to the procedure where a statement could amend a committee’s report after the committee’s report had been adopted and subsequently approved. He said the $3 billion decline reserves that the Finance Committee’s report captured did not just surface, as it was contained in a statement from the Finance Minister during a meeting with the Committee.

“Mr Speaker, I was in that meeting and it was the Minister of Finance who made that statement and our Clerks of Parliament have responsibility to capture exactly what the minister said and the report was signed by the Chairman of the committee. I do not think it is the chairman who has to amend this figure; if for any reason the information we have on record is different from what the central bank has it is for the BoG to issue a statement to correct same if it is not same,” he stated.

Consequently, the House agreed to stand the correction down until Monday, July 25, 2022 when the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, is to appear before Parliament to present the Mid-Year Budget Statement and also confirm the data and figures as Mr. Kwarteng sought to correct.

Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com

Ghanaians have been urged to avail themselves for the COVID-19 vaccination which is still ongoing in the country. The parliamentary Select Committee on Health at a press briefing bemoaned the low turnout in the vaccination exercise against the COVID-19 virus, and encouraged people who are yet to be vaccinated to do so. The Chairman of the Committee, Dr. Nana Ayew Afriye said though the country has opportunity to vaccinate over 22 million people, only 18 million has been vaccinated so far.

He blamed peoples refusal on superstition and some several other reasons.
The said in view of this, the health committee is touring the vaious regions begining tomorrow to campaign for the citizens to get vaccinated. The Ranking Member of the Committee, the Ranking Member, Mr. Minta Akandoh said the virus has come to stay and it is important to take appropriate measures to avoid any new wave so that we can properly return to our normal lives.

He said data available to the committee indicates that the vaccination rate in some regions of the country including Oti, Volta, Eastern, Western North, and Ashanti Regions is very low, particularly in the rural districts where health infrastructure is very weak, posing danger to the citizens living in those areas.

According him in the event of any new wave in those places, the effect would be devastating, adding that “whether we like it or not we would witness another wave of COVID-19” like it is happening in other countries. He debunked the conspiracy theories surrounding the vaccines stating that all parliamentarians have submitted themselves to the vaccination exercise including many other Ghanaians and they are doing well, as such people should not fall for such deceits from people.

He called on the Ministry of Health to begin to do more by making the vaccines available at the districts to enable people access it, and not wait for any emergency before responding to it.

Ghanamps.com