Author: Kwaku GhanaMPs

The Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram who doubles as deputy ranking on Communications Committee of Parliament, Samuel Narttey George has stated clearly that, the Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekuful has no legal rights and power to sell AIRTEL/TIGO ( A.T ) Communication Network to any company without a Parliamentary approval.

He explained that, the laws of Ghana require that, all international agreements must have a Parliamentary approval to legalize such an agreement yet; the communication minister has not submitted anything of that kind to the House.

Mr Sam George further sound a word of caution to any foreign company that has interest in buying AIRTEL/TIGO to pull out since the NDC government would not consider such an agreement as the legal kind and would cancel it.

Ghanamps.com

The Minority leader, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson has called on the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to immediately present a Bill to parliament to remove the said taxes he mentioned yesterday during his delivery off the books since he is still the chairman of the economic management team.

He explained that, the Vice President was in Parliament when the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta was presenting the Bill on E-levy, so he can’t say today that, he has no hands in it; therefore he would take it off when he becomes the President.

The leader further said, the General Secretary of the NPP and the minister for information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah sits in the cabinet meetings and all these people told Ghanaians that, the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia played an instrumental role in preparing the E-levy Bill.

The Minority leader, who made the call today at a press conference in Parliament, believes Dr. Bawimia’s promise to take off the VAT on domestic electricity consumption and also scrap the E-Levy should not be postponed until 2025, and that the Vice President is in a good place now to ensure the removal of these taxes as he supervised their formulation.

Ghanamps.com

Ghana’s legislature will reconvene today Tuesday February 6, 2024 after the Christmas break to commence proceedings for the last year (session) of the 8th Parliament.

The Speaker of Parliament Rt Hon Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin in a statement recalling the lawmakers said the commencement of the Fourth Session of the Eighth Parliament of the Fourth Republic shall commence at Ten o’clock in the forenoon of Tuesday, 6th February, 2024.”

The statememt said the Speaker of Parliament, by Clause (1) of Article 112 of the 1992 Constitution, appointed Parliament House, Accra, to be the place of meeting.

“Know Ye All Men that in the exercise of the powers conferred on the Speaker by Clause (1) of Article 112 of the Constitution, I, Rt Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, Speaker of Parliament, by this Constitutional Instrument, appoint Parliament House Accra to be the place….,” it said

The House adjourned sine die, on Thursday, December 22, 2023, to enables the lawamkers take a break for the Christmas and New Year holidays.

As the House officially resumes plenary today, the dynamics with regards to attendance to business in the chamber are expected to change significantly.

This is particular because of the number casualties recorded in the January 27, 2024 primaries of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), where a total of 28 sitting legislators lost their bid to regain the party’s ticket for the 2024 general elections.

The development if not managed properly by the party hierachy, may affect attendance to the chamber thereby negatively impacting government bussiness.

Sitting MPs who lost in the parliamentary primaries and have become bitter may have nothing to lose if they fail to be responsive to happenings in the chamber.

A number of outstanding Bills including the Affirmative Action Bill,2023, Social Protection Bill, 2023, Environmental Protection Agency amendment Bill among others are expected to receive much attention during the Meeting.

Some new Bills are also expected to be introduced to the lawmaking chamber.

These include the presidential transition amendment bill, the Advertising council bill, Consumer Protection bill, Ghana Roads Authority Bill, 2023 among others.

Members of Parliament on the Committee on Environment, Science and Technology on Thursday, February 1, 2024, as part of their oversight responsibilities met with scraps dealers in Koforidua to assess how they are going about collection of E-waste and metal scraps.

Chairman of the Committee Dr. Emmanuel Marfo addressing the Eastern Regional scraps dealers noted that when Ghanaians build because of heat they get in air-conditioners but questioned how they dispose of them upon damage.
Again, as a Committee they do not want to seat in Accra and be briefed on what is happening on the field, so they have to come and see things for themselves.

He used the opportunity to thank Ecopartners for the training and education they are giving to the scrap dealers on the harmful nature of electronic waste as they contain some harmful elements when not properly disposed of can have dire consequences on the environment. He further pointed out that E-waste is not a waste per say because if processed, it generates more money.

He thus, encouraged the scrape dealers to come together to form a strong association so that they can be supported.
Dr. Marfo added that when a collection centre is built, the scrap dealers need to feed the centre with materials, thus they need to work assiduously.

A technical officer of Ecopartners Eric Kobena Arthur indicated to the Committee that they have a good working relationship with the scraps dealers; they have trained them and impacted knowledge on how to handle E-waste, adding that they now have a fair knowledge that per their activities if they do not handle the wastes well, it can pose danger to the environment.

The scraps dealers were happy that members of the Committee had called on them since the scraps activities is what they use in looking after their family its good they have been given training on the harmful nature of the E-waste when not handled properly.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

The Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation team leader on E-waste, Dr. Vincent Nartey Kyere has disclosed that the E-waste centre built in Accra would be replicated in the other regions.

According to him they are looking for five more E-waste collection centres in Accra to add up to the existing one to close up the proximity gap; adding that when E-waste is collected from Madina one should not move all the way to Agbogbloshie.

He made this known in an interview on Wednesday, January 31, 2024, when lawmakers on the Committee of Environment Science and Technology as part of their oversight responsibilities toured E-waste collection centres at Agbogbloshie and Atomic Energy.

On the issue of challenges, Dr. Vincent Nartey pointed out that price fluctuation is a matter of concern as the scraps dealers involve in the trade know the trade very well and know what is charged on the international market, hence want same price to affect them and added that the one collection centre in Accra is not enough.

Additionally, there is the need for education as people do not understand the issues of these hazardous materials; so to bring people’s attention to it, we need some kind of serious investment in the sector.

According to him, the project is more on collection of E-waste materials, recycling and disposing of electrical, as well as electronic materials.

“We then look at the final treatment, final recycling and disposal of the items. We started the collection from Agbogbloshie Green Land Facility where we collected the items, waste materials at an incentive amount”. This, he said is contrary to how it was previously handled where people were burning these things or doing some crude application to it.

“And we said at what price will people bring these items so that they do not take it through the crude method? So we started with this incentive. So far when we started we have paid five point six million Ghana cedis to collect almost five million tons of materials.

He stated that there is this small formal sector that has the investment and technology to do proper recycling. However, because they are not able to compete with the informal sector market they do not get the materials. “So the materials collected are given to the formal people assuring them that there are materials. We have done the first fifty tones of materials; once the materials are not useful, we find a way of disposing it”, he added.

After the Agbogbloshie tour the Committee moved to Atomic Energy where a new E-waste facility of about thousand five square meter area has been built which has containers that would expand the collection of E-wastes.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

Chairman of the Committee on Environment, Science and Technology, Dr. Emmanuel Marfo has expressed worry over the springing up of residential facilities around an E-waste collection centre around the Atomic Energy Commission.

Dr. Marfo who made the observation when he led members on the committee to inspect the centre on Wednesday, 31 January 2024 noted that the houses around the facility should be prepared to deal with whatever consequences there is as they would take steps to let the local Assemblies know that there is a development there, hence if there is any intervention that can take place to make sure that the springing up stops because of the harmful effect it should be resolved and the Assembly should deal with it.

In an interview, he pointed out that one challenge is the land tenure when the Committee visited Agbogbloshie which was their first point of visit and the next point was Atomic Energy where they identified land encroachment as a serious challenge, hence the need to let the land encroachers know the purpose of the facility.

He further pointed out that the Committee has oversight responsibility over the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation and its agencies and there has always been report on the building of a holding centre.

So as part of their work the committee decided to come to the field and look at what is being done; how E-waste is being handled from the collection to the facility point, as it has always been reported that it is being built for the purpose of handling E-waste so that industry and private people who are investing into recycle facilities would be assured of the location they can get the materials to feed their industry and where we can contain hazardous materials.

He affirmed that e-waste is one of the fastest growing solid wastes concerns globally and how to effectively manage it giving that our population is increasing as construction of these electronic gadgets keeps going on including computers, air-conditioners, refrigerators, mobile phones among others.

“How are we going to handle the waste going forward? Hence the reason that committee decided to monitor the progress we have made as a country”, he pointed out.

On their impression after the tour, he noted that, so far so good as far as the pilot project is concerned it looks like the project handlers know what they are doing. “They can forecast and know how the future would look like and they are proposing a number of things that we think would help”.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com