News:
June 23, 2017
Member of Parliament (MP) for Wa West Joseph Yieleh Chireh has called on leadership of the Majority side to reconstitute chairmen/chairpersons of the committees, to enable the House engage in serious business as most chairs had been appointed as Ministers and Deputies.
“The first week after we resumed, they should have laid a paper reconstituting the various chairmen/chairpersons who have been appointed, why they are delaying nobody knows and yet these are people saying they are in a hurry to execute their mandate” he observed.
He further noted that, the “hurry will slow down” because the basic thing of reconstituting a committee they cannot do on time.
Speaking in an interview with ghanamps.com, he said consultation should have been done whiles on recess, “we have resumed for the second meeting of the first session take one week to sort out things and reconstitute the committees.
Now Ministers and their Deputies are now finding out “what their turf is what is their mandate and what are they supposed to do. You see that they have not yet started bringing bills and other papers for consideration by Parliament”, he said.
In terms of their attendance, quite a number of them do not come to Parliament already in this second meeting, which is the concern we have about “emptying of Parliament when you make this appointments”, he lamented.
“We should ask ourselves as a people when you appoint Ministers, what do you want them to do, we have not come to a clear understanding that a Minister is to look at documents, they are so busy yes, but unless you are involved in developing the document yourself ” he said.
The former health Minister noted that, Ministers are supported by technical people, they bring them documents and want their policy direction, but when Ministers are appointed and is as if they are going to be running the Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDA’s) that is where the mistake comes from.
“When Ministers know what their responsibilities is to combine both responsibilities, they can come to Parliament in the morning, in the afternoon after 2pm they can go back to the ministries. But I believe that it is yet too early to assess the attendance of Ministers and their Deputies to Parliament,we do not have anything serious on going in the House”, the Wa West legislator remarked.
By: Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com