Ranking Member on the Finance Committee in Parliament, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, has expressed his intention to file for the second time, a motion to constitute a bipartisan committee to investigate government’s Covid-19 expenditure.
According to him, he will re-file the motion before the House today, Thursday, February 24, 2022, as the bi-partisan probe is necessary especially with regards to what he reckons as an outrageous expenditure by the government on Covid-19. Dr Forson explained that Parliament “does not have a handle on the very expenditure that was sent to us in economic difficulties”.
“I hope to have a meeting with the leadership of the Minority Caucus… and if all is well, I will be able to file the motion again. I think I have various options; probably I may also decide to challenge the Speaker’s ruling. In fact, if you sit in committee meetings in Parliament, most Sector Ministers that this money went to them, anytime you are interrogating the matter, they tell you that the amount that they claim was given to them; the entire amount was not given to them”.
Dr Cassiel Ato Forson
Dr Forson’s previous motion was admitted by Speaker Alban Bagbin but was however dismissed by First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu, who insisted that the motion should not have been admitted from the beginning. That notwithstanding, the Speaker, Alban Babgin, subsequently noted that Joseph Osei-Owusu’s ruling was unconstitutional, illegal and offensive.
Following this, Dr Forson indicated that he is determined to ensure accountability and oversight of the public purse. He emphasized that the amount of GH₵10 billion involved in the case is “too much”. As such, it is time to sit down and interrogate the matter for “us to understand how this money was spent and make some proposals and possible legislation so that we can regulate this going forward”.
Dissent in parliament over probe into government’s expenditure
The First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei-Owusu, dismissed a private member’s motion on the floor of Parliament seeking to probe COVID-19 expenditure on February 22, 2022. He indicated that the work of such a bi-partisan committee is already provided for by the Constitution, to be conducted by the Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). Following this, he was of the opinion that the motion ought not to have been admitted before the House.
However, the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, had early on admitted the motion from three Members of the Minority Caucus for an inquiry into the expenditure made by the government since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, the Minority Chief Whip, Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, and the Ranking Member on the Finance Committee, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, filed the motion which sought to constitute a bi-partisan parliamentary committee chaired by a member of the Minority to probe COVID-19 expenditure.
Similarly, the Minority in Parliament petitioned the Auditor-General to audit government expenditure on food, and water government supplied to the vulnerable during the three-week COVID-19 partial lockdown period. The petition, invoked Section 16 of the Audit Service Act, 2000 (Act 584), and called on the Auditor-General to undertake a Special Audit into the expenditure on the GHS 280.3 million allocated for the provision of food and water under the Coronavirus Alleviation Program (CAP).
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