Parliament’s Committee on Communications has suspended its sitting to consider estimates for the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation due to what it said are very serious material violations.
The inability of the Ministry to furnish the Committee with six outstanding annual reports spanning 2015 to 2020 led to the Chairman suspending the work and ordering the Minister to make those reports available before they begin consideration of the estimates.
The Minority Caucus on the Communications Committee indicated these annual reports have been outstanding for too long and persistent attempts to get the Ministry to address it has been to no avail.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, Ranking Member of the Committee, Alhaji A. B. A Fusseni disclosed the Minister was told in unequivocal terms those violations cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely.
“As long as the violations remain unratified, this Committee will not push to hear the Minister on the estimates of the Ministry.”
“It was a long drawn out process but at the end, the law stuck and reasoning prevailed and everybody saw that is in compliance with our laws.”
“We are a law abiding country and we should not allow people to violate our laws with impunity. Some must stand up for the law,” he added.
The suspension, he said, is a decision of the Committee and that of the Chairman and therefore until the issues are resolved, the Majority cannot go behind and hold a secret meeting, and stressed the Minority cannot also be accused of obstructing government business.
Deputy Ranking of the Committee, Samuel Nartey George, disclosed that during the meeting, Member for Bunkpurugu arrested the process on the back of the fact that the Minister had failed to comply with certain portions of her own Agency’s Act, the NCA Act Section 23 that demanded the Annual reports including report of the Auditor-General to be submitted to Parliament by the Minister.
According to him, Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful did claimed during the vetting that some of the reports were already in the custody of the House and would be laid.
“Today when she appeared and was scrutinised by the Committee she indicated she is now bringing the 2015 and 2016 reports and that they have not been laid before the House.”
“We thought that was in stark contradiction to what she said at the Vetting Committee. On the basis of that, our side of the Committee said we could not continue with considering the estimates of the Communications Ministry until the right things are done.”
“We’ve been given indication that by close of today, three of those reports, 2015, 2016 and 2017 will be provided and by Friday, an additional two, which will be the 2018 and 2019 reports will be provided. And then at the commencement of the next meeting of Parliament in January, the 2020 report will be provided.”
“We will be holding the Minister to strict performance on that,” he said.
Deputy Minority Whip, Ahmed Ibrahim, expressed surprise the Communications Ministry and the National Communication Authority (NCA), which in 2017 and 2018, shut down some media houses for not complying with the law have themselves failed to comply with their own law of accountability.”
“We are surprised that for four good years the Minister has failed to submit even a single annual audited account of her outfit to this Committee and to Parliament.”
“That is why we took that decision. So let nobody goof and say the Minority in Parliament are obstructing government business. We are not.”
“We are in an era of digitalization, how do you embark on digitalization if you are not accountable to the very people whose money you are using,” he quizzed?
Source: MyPublisher24.com