The Minority in Parliament has rubbished claims that it is against the passage of the Right to Information (RTI) bill.
This is in response to the Majority caucus yesterday [Wednesday] accusing them of stalling the consideration of the remaining amendments left to be worked on before passage of the longstanding bill.
According to the majority, many MPs on the minority side, since Tuesday, have been leaving the chamber in droves when the matter of the RTI bill comes up, denying the house the needed quorum to transact business matter.
But speaking to Citi News, the Deputy Minority Leader, Dominic Nitiwul, reiterated his soon-to-be majority caucus’ commitment to passing the RTI Bill.
This is despite Mr. Nitiwul admitting the Minority still had issues with some clauses in the implementation of the bill.
“We are all committed to passing it. Every single member of Parliament is committed to passing the Right to Information bill. As a party and as a caucus, we are one of the few people who want it passed. We thought that even by this time, we should have passed that Bill.”
“There are clauses in there that we think are problematic. One of them is the implementation because the majority, thinking they would win the election, decided to push the implementation to five years from today. It was one of the issues we said no to. So there are some pertinent issues we need to agree on before we will pass it as it is,” the Deputy-Minority leaders added.
The RTI Bill was drafted in 1999 and reviewed in 2003, 2005 and 2007 but was not presented to Parliament.
The first attempt at enacting the law on the right to information was made when the Bill was presented to Parliament on February 5, 2010. The Attorney-General on June 25,
The Attorney General on June 25, 2015, moved the current incarnation of the Bill for the second reading which is currently awaiting passage in Parliament.
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana