Parliament
will not consider two loan facility agreements totalling $1 billion laid before
the House until the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, appears before the House
on June 22, 2022, to account for how COVID-19 money approved by the House since
the outbreak of the pandemic, was applied.
The Speaker of Parliament,
Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, gave the directive after the House suspended
sitting for 10 minutes for the leadership of the House to deliberate on the
inability of Mr Ofori-Atta to appear before the House yesterday[June 16, 2022].
Speaker’s ruling
This was after the Minority
caucus had expressed their disappointment about the non-availability of the
Finance Minister to brief the House yesterday on how COVID-19 money had been
utilised since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 and to answer 16 questions
asked of his ministry by members of the House.
The Speaker in his ruling after the meeting by the
leadership, also directed that all matters relating to the COVID-19 loan
facility agreement laid before Parliament would not be considered until the
Finance Minister came before the House to account to Parliament, on behalf of
Ghanaians, as to how previous loans for COVID-19 were spent.
Mr Bagbin said although there
was communication through the Majority Leader by the Finance Minister, Mr
Ofori-Atta also spoke to him directly on the phone about his non-availability
to appear before the House yesterday, as requested.
He is, therefore, to appear
before the House on Wednesday, June 22, 2022.
Standing Orders
Mr Bagbin said when questions
were asked of Ministers, the House expected them to come and answer them and
cited Standing Order 61 of Parliament to buttress his point which says that “
Ministers shall by Order of the House requested to attend to sittings of the
House to answer questions asked of them”.
He further cited Standing
Order 60 (3) which also says that “ A Minister shall not take not more than
three weeks to respond to the question of House” to give his ruling on the
matter.
Mr Bagbin said based on the
Standing Orders of Parliament, the Business Committee of the House was given
the opportunity to do the allotment and thus alloted June 16, for the Finance
Minister to come and answer a number of questions that stood in the name of his
ministry.
“ The Finance Minister told us
that he will not be available today and before today, I gave a directive to the
effect that the Minister appeared before this House to account for money that
we approved for him to use to lead the country as to how we could respond to
the COVID-19 pandemic “, the Speaker said.
“ A lot of questions have been
raised so we expected the Minister to come and account as to how state
resources had been applied to the benefit of the people.
“ I just indicated that until that is done, a motion
requesting for approval of the House for money to be given to the Ministry of
Finance for the purpose of the COVID-19 will be on hold”, the Speaker stated
further.
Mr Bagbin reiterated that
until the Finance Minister answered the questions and went through the
accountability process, the House would not take that motion.
“With respect to the question
for today, the Finance Minister has another request before us and that will
also be affected. Until he comes to respond to the question and to submit the
statement as to how that money has been applied, we will not entertain any
business from his ministry,” the Speaker stated.
Source:Graphic.com.gh