The Majority Chief Whip, Mr Frank Annor Dompreh, has stated that the outstanding monies to be paid to Parliament had been officially released by the Finance ministry.
This comes after Speaker Alban Bagbin, on Thursday, May 27, 2022, disclosed that the House was broke and had been starved of resources by the Finance Ministry.
The Speaker in his narrative said he stopped approving financial commitments of the house due to the constraints.
“It is not because I like declining your requests. It is because we don’t have the wherewithal to fund those operations.”
“The Ministry of Finance should not treat Parliament like a ministry or NGO,” he said.
“This is an arm of government. We are not part of the MMDAs. We have even been written ro, to reduce our budget in some cases by 50 percent,” he stated.
“If they want Parliament to run aground, they should let us know. The Speaker is not ready and prepared to be blamed for the inability to get Parliament going on just because we are not getting the necessary funding.”
But reacting to the comments, Mr. Dompreh said, ”if the Speaker had exercised patience and verified the issue, he would not have made the comments he made”.
He added that the cause of the delay was because the monies had to go through processes before hinting at their accounts.
He disclosed that the Majority Leader, the Clerk of Parliament and the Head of Accounts had discussed the issue, and the Controller and Accountant General were far advanced in releasing the outstanding money of Ghc25 million for goods and services.
He said it was unfortunate that the Speaker, was not informed the outstanding money had been released.
”The truth is that Controller had released the money, and it was going through processes. The Clerk and others knew, but it was unfortunate the Speaker was not informed.”
Meanwhile, he has further disclosed that an outstanding amount of Ghc50 million for the National Insurance Scheme has been released.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
