News:
First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu
March 21, 2022
First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu had expressed worry over the practice where Members of Parliament move to the chamber, write their names and leave the chamber.
The Deputy Minister had reason to direct the table office to write names of only members present in the chamber unless they were seen involving in proceeding before leaving for other parliamentary businesses.
The House last week suffered a number of adjournments for lack of quorum usually raised by the Minority side of the House.
According to the First Deputy Speaker, it is difficult to justify the adjournment of proceedings occasioned by lack of quorum, and yet the following day, in the votes and proceedings, there are more than necessary numbers of lawmakers to take decisions.
He stated that he was not oblivious of the fact that some lawmakers attend Committee meetings at a point in time, but there are procedures to doing that.
“That is why, the rules says ring the bell for ten minutes, there is nowhere in the presence of this parliament that you cannot walk into the chamber within ten minutes if indeed we have people at the committee meetings. We have enough time to ask them to come to the chamber so that business of the House can go on. I find it inconsistent business is truncated because a quorum is raised and the numbers are not sufficient”.
And charge leadership of the House to do something about this development and it has occurred throughout the whole of last week; proceedings have been halted, “because at a point someone counts and noticed that there are not sufficient members in the House for it to proceed, yet the following morning our report indicated that we have more members”.
So, if anybody takes the report and compare with the votes and proceedings “what happened, it would be difficult to reconcile how come we have two hundred and fifty of you present yet you could not take a decision; we have to do something about this reporting”, he emphasized..
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com