News:
February 15, 2021
Member of Parliament for North Tongu Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has said the Appointment Committee of Ghana’s Parliament should have more time to scrutinize nominees that come before them.
According to him they need to be less concerned about how quickly they want to finish with nominees and get all the numbers approved within a short period of time all because the number of the President’s appointees is quite large.
He further pointed out in an interview that in other advanced democratic jurisdictions, two to three days are spent on nominees that appear before the Appointment Committee. “We have requested some information from the nominees that they didn’t have, and they have assured us that they would let us have it latter”.
Again, he noted that they are done with them and have moved to the next nominee. Adding that those information are not brought to the Committee for them to look at the documents for them to take them through its content after study, “it is because of the rush or the documents might not be submitted at all, before you realize a report of the Committee is being put together for the plenary to consider”.
Mr. Okudzeto was quick to point out that over the years there has been improvement as they were doing five to six nominees a day and the process appeared quite rushed, and now they do on the average three, but the first day only two nominees were taken.
“As the Minority, when we met at the Committee we pointed out that we should not go beyond two nominees a day looking at the constraints of the pandemic, sitting for a long time our health and that of the nominee. Journalists and those who accompany the nominees, it is not the best to be in an enclosure for a long time”, and added that they are still pushing for the numbers to be reduced, “I think we should just take one nominee for a day”.
He also said they would re-visit the matter of taking two nominees a day, as the second and third day had witnessed three nominees which runs deep into the night. “When we get deep into the night sometimes fatigue sets in, we are all human beings even machines do get tired, this are the concerns we have and we believe we will sit with the chairman to consider this”.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com