Parliament through a voice vote on Thursday, January 28, 2021, voted against the motion by Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga.
His motion was to ask the government to absorb fees of students in public tertiary institutions and to extend support to private universities for the 2021 academic year.
But the House through a voice vote had the motion thrown out.
The Minority’s side supported the motion whereas the Majority’s side voted against it.
The MP has expressed shock that the NPP MPs rejected it.
“I am very scandalized by their approach. It is not all the time that when you are trying to solve a problem, you throw money at it. You can solve a problem by throwing efficiency and prudent management at it. You cannot use the 2019 economy condition fees in a 2020 pandemic economy so let’s reconsider these fees, and they said no. Let’s say government should absorb it, I agree that we should use the word absorb instead of suspend, we suspended it then they came back and said the motion is incompetent and against the constitution. They also argued that where will the government get the money to pay. This is very unfortunate,” he said on Eyewitness News shortly after the parliamentary proceedings.
The MP had also argued that: “There was no need to call for division because we sit on both sides. You could see that they [Majority] were absolutely more than us. The issue was that even the Speaker realized that the Minority members were not in the house in their numbers because of the new policy that all of us should not come to the chamber at the same time.”
“You could see from the chamber that the NDC members were not many, so the Speaker even considered deferring the vote on the matter to the following days that when everyone is in the chamber, we can vote. But the Majority Leader raised objections to that and the Speaker then decided to allow that and clearly because they were many- through the voice votes they carried the day”, he stated.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com
