Speaker of Parliament, Edward Doe Adjaho, has charged Members of Parliament (MPs) to step up their oversight role to ensure that loans approved by Parliament are used judiciously.
This, he said, will dispel the wrong impression that the House just approves loan agreements without undertaking proper scrutiny.
Parliament resumed on Wednesday for an emergency sitting and on Thursday, the House approved loan facilities of over $340 million.
The loan facility will be used for the construction of the Kasoa Interchange, a new flyover at Ring Road central and continuation of works on the Kwame Nkrumah Circle interchange.
The House also approved over $45million for financing the Accra streets resurfacing project.
[contextly_sidebar id=”mjqoBAvegtaGDQDeWrPqcHeW1N3R9gPl”]In his closing statement, Speaker Doe Adjaho assured committees of the House they will have his full support to play their supervisory role properly.
He charged all Parliamentary committees to continue to perform their oversight responsibility “and I want to assure them that I will give them every support in that direction.”
Doe Adjaho added that renovation works in Parliament is expected to be completed by the end of October and he promised to ensure MPs will resume work without any interferences.
On his part, the deputy Minority leader, Dominic Nitiwul bemoaned the practice where Parliament is called for emergency sittings to approve loans.
According to him, the loan agreements which were approved “were huge” adding that “the issues that were involved were varied and many and the infrastructure projects were huge.”
Nitiwul therefore remarked that ample time had to be dedicated for extensive scrutiny saying, “we would have expected the executive to at least give Parliament enough time to look at these issues critically and examine them.”
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By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @osamidan