Insults on deputies, Parliament for a disgusting new room – Otchere-Darko

General News of Saturday, July 6, 2019

Source: Myjoyonline.com

2019-07-06

I am disgusted by the insults he has suffered against our MPs and Parliament as a whole because of the construction of a new Parliament. It has been fueled by many well meaning individuals and groups, but hypocritically including a group that has been instrumental from the start and throughout the process to bring it to this stage: the NDC. It was so easy to describe this as a luxury, a grand project and to mobilize public anger against this project.

Parliament has been asking for a new room for a few years now. On January 6, 2017, President Doe Adjaho worked on this issue before he left. President John Mahama, in his 2013 State of the Nation Address, had promised MPs the building and proposed funding for the feasibility work to be done on the new chamber.

A competitive bid to select architects and contractors for the new project was launched under the chairmanship of outgoing President Mike Oquaye. The entire Parliament, actively led by majority and minority leaders, has been fully involved in this process. That they can not deny. It was a collective effort, involving all parties in the legislature. At present, Parliament has done all that is necessary, with the exception of two things: (1) to convince the public to participate (2) in obtaining the public funds allocated and released for this purpose.

It is clear that Parliament, the bastion of our democratic expression, has completely ignored an important electoral group – the very essence of their existence, the people they represent, the general public. They failed the public relations test. They had not prepared the population for this project and at a time when they were demanding that their roads be drawn, that more decent and more affordable houses be built and that more drainage systems be built.

That's where the problem lies: the budget schedule. The bill is $ 200 million. Can Ghana afford it? This week, the president has cut the groundwork for a $ 100 million housing project for the military. Last week, the finance minister approved financing of 1.5 billion GHS for roads, and many more projects are expected before the end of the year. This year, more than $ 1 billion (more than $ 5 billion GHS) is spent on subsidizing the power supply – a consumable; 500 million dollars spent so far. Last year, 1.2 billion GHS was spent on rescuing the banking sector and securing the savings of about 1.5 million depositors. Is it possible to start spending money on the construction of this new room? If so, how much now and how much later? This critical option seems completely lost in the debate.

The anger of the public is as if the government (especially the legislature) was too insensitive to even consider this project. Yet when you strip everything, public anger is mainly due to the fact that they do not consider it a priority project deserving such a large sum. Is the 2019 budget a priority project? Do we have money to do it now? Probably not? Do we want him to be completely killed? I doubt that. Can we put it away for the moment? Yes we can. Can we stagger spending so that the Department of Finance can adapt to it? Perhaps.

Emotions run wild and wide for the moment. But it's important to take a break and consider the issues. I am tidying up now, like many of you. But what if the distribution of the amount to be spent is such that what will be spent this year is less than what we currently spend a month for ENI ($ 40 million), for example?

And if Parliament proposed a plan that would scale development funding so that the national budget could take it into account? Are we open to reasonable and viable options that will not completely kill the project?

I'm still tidying it up.