Opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Asawase constituency in the Ashanti Region, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka is pushing for a scaling down of the number of Members of Parliament from 275 to 200.
The Minority Chief Whip according to BestNewsGH.com sources believe the move is the panacea to the incessant challenge of absenteeism Ghana’s parliament has been bedeviled with.
Mr. Muntaka who was speaking on Kumasi based Luv Fm opined that “Some of our MPs are not doing the work they were elected to do. Sometimes you have people just walk in and walk out; some don’t pay attention to the details when it comes, simply because their attention is somewhere.”
The remaining 75 seats, he said, should be kept for representatives from minority groups who, based on their competence and expertise will be appointed to support parliament.
He said “If I had my way, I would have said that let us reduce the constituencies to 200 and the other 75 we leave it for the political parties based on the results that we get from the election. Then we have a strict criterion, for example, minimum education will be a degree, experience of not less than 15 years, etc so that a certain caliber of people from the political parties can be decided on. Then these people become the third component or better still use it for affirmative action.”
Mr. Muntaka furher stated that “In Uganda, they have seats for the women, seats for the youth, physically-challenged, the military and other relevant minority groups because these groups may naturally not be able to win a seat. Why can’t we also do that? I want to believe when we do this, it will help our democracy.”
As a way of checking lateness and absenteeism by Members of Parliament in the interim, Mr. Muntaka suggests that a biometric attendance recording system be installed in Parliament to prevent MPs from unduly staying away from their duties, arguing that the present system of manual recording is not robust enough.
“Sometimes you know definitely that this person has traveled so who signed for him? You have people hiring staff to sign them in and this is terrible. The only way to end that will be to get a biometric system where you clock in with a thumbprint and because that is unique no one can sign in for another person’’ he averred.
He added that “We really need to revise our standing orders. With our standing orders, a person will be absent and when it’s time for him or her to be punished, he shows his face two or three times and that is it, then he disappears again. Secondly, we have people who come and sit in the chamber for less than 10 minutes and walk out.”
Source: BestNewsGH.com
