Former President, John Dramani Mahama, has urged government to put a hold on its proposal to build constituency offices for members of parliament.
According to him, the current economic situation doesn’t bode well for such a move to be made by government. He revealed that in the current economic state, public funds must go into projects that are necessary and which meet the pressing needs of our people in the communities.
“The proposed building of Constituency offices for MPs should be shelved until the economy is out of the woods. In the interim, office space can be found within the District Assemblies or other government buildings for the purpose.”
John Dramani Mahama
Contained in a facebook post, His Excellency John Mahama stated that projects of such nature must have “tangible and measurable impact on job creation” and national development.
The former President made similar suggestions in October this year during his state of the economy address at the University for Professional Studies. He noted that although building of the offices may sound prudent and politically sound, it is not what the country needs at this juncture.
H.E. Mahama suggested that offices be made available to the MPs in the various district assembly offices across the country.
The construction of constituency offices for all 275 Members of Parliament was contained in the 2022 budget presented by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta and it’s expected to commence in 2022 in phases.
The move, according to the Minister then, is one of the many activities being undertaken under the Parliamentary Service Office Support Project (PSOSP) to strengthen Parliament and boost the work of the legislators.
Construction of constituency offices
Mr Ofori-Atta indicated that the chamber of parliament is also expected to get a facelift with the ICT facilities via the upgrade of meeting rooms to improve the quality of video and replace consoles to improve feed for live broadcast of proceedings.
He stated that other projects at various stages of completion are the e-Parliament project; Phase II of the Table Office MIS; the Data Centre; and the operationalization of the Budget and Fiscal Analysis Office.
Prior to this, government had programmed to provide some money towards the construction of the constituency offices with an initial support amount of GHC45.5 million. The amount is intended to cater for the first phase of the project which is to provide constituency offices for all the 275 MPs by 2024.
A report by the Special Budget Committee of Parliament looking at the 2021 budget indicated the Parliamentary Service intended to construct 70 of such offices annually so that by the end of 2024, all 275 Constituencies will be provided.
Successful execution of the project, the report highlighted, will further deepen the representational role of Members of Parliament by bringing them closer to their constituents. However, there have been widespread concerns that the project is an additional burden on the public purse and must therefore be suspended, but some legislators have defended it, saying it will help deepen democracy.
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