RTI: New amendments tabled by CSOs delaying the passage of Bill – MP

General News of Friday, March 22, 2019

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

2019-03-22

On Thursday, during the plenary session, Parliament had to postpone the motion and the review of the long-standing right to information bill.

The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, called for the removal of the bill from the motion document after reading the bill.

His action was made necessary by the decision of the civil society organization to make additional proposals for inclusion in the draft law.

Action hampers MPs' attempts and efforts to pbad the bill, resulting in a delay in the adoption of the bill.

However, commenting on the developments, Ahmed Ibrahim, Chair of the Parliament's Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and the Deputy Minority Whip, should not be held responsible for the delay with which the bill was adopted, with vigorous efforts to finalize the project. he.

Banda MP said, "The executive has done its part, Parliament has also done its part, it's the right to information coalition, they say they do not want it to be adopted. as we did. that is … so the public should understand that it is not the parliament of Ghana that tries not to adopt the RTI, but the public that brings a new amendment to the work we have done up to the end. now. "

He explained that the leaders were pbadionate about the bill, but the delays came from public coalitions, but the House would adopt them by Friday.

Context

Twenty-two years have pbaded since the drafting of the first RTI Law on the Right to Information under the auspices of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the IEA, and sixteen years since the Executive Arm of the Government drafted the first RTI bill, it was finally tabled in Parliament at the beginning of the month to be considered for pbadage.

The draft executive law was then reviewed in 2003, 2005 and 2007, but was never tabled in Parliament until February 5, 2010. The government has been under considerable pressure to pbad the bill, fearing that the government deliberately delays the process.