News:
Rt. Hon Alban Bagbin
November 18, 2021
Speaker of Parliament Rt Hon Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin has directed that the Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwesi Amoako Atta has no powers to suspend road toll collection by a statement signed by him.
According to him, the Minister who is a senior member of the House might have reacted wrongly, “I call on him to honourably withdraw this directive, failure to do so would be a serious breach of the directives of the Speaker, and that would amount to contempt of Parliament”.
The Speaker gave this directive when the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu on Thursday, November 18, 2021 raised the issue on the floor of the House.
The Speaker further noted that the budget presented by the finance minister was on behalf of the President and was supposed to take effect in January 2022 when approved by the House, and noted that until the budget is approved, all that is contained in the budget is proposal, as it is in the budget for 2022 for the road tolls to be abolished.
“We have the authority to approve, they, the Executive arm of government have the duty to lay before the House those policy proposals, until they are approved nobody, I mean nobody to start implementing something that does not exist”.
As to whether that amount to the disrespect to the House, he said “that is where I disagree, it is not disrespect to the House, and since this is not a court of law, the Minister might have misunderstood the law and it is for parliament to draw his attention and tell him that “he has no such authority”, he indicated.
According to him, in spite of all the legal expressions exhibited on the floor of the House, the Roads and Highways Minister has no such powers to suspend collection of road tolls per his statement issued. “It is not a matter of operationalisation of the law, there is no such law, and there is a proposal in the budget, the Executive on their own cannot just suspend the law if they have any difficulties they should come back to the House”, the speaker advised.
Speaker Alban Bagbin noted that if the need to suspend collection of road tolls was urgent, it could be brought to the House under a certificate of urgency and since 1993 that has been the practice. The House would have passed that into law on Wednesday, November 17, 2021.
Meanwhile, the Speaker’s directive did not go down well with the Majority Leader Osei-Kyei-Mensah-Bons when he got the opportunity to speak, he pointed out that his thinking was that, it should have been a directive from the House and not from the Speaker.
But the Speaker insisted that this was his directives, and if the Majority Leader had any issue he knows what to do to challenge the directives of the Speaker.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com