By: Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
The Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, Rt. Hon Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, says the legislative arm of government (Parliament) needs more funds to effectively perform its oversight role over the executive arm.
Rt. Hon Bagbin has attributed Parliament’s struggles in effectively executing its oversight role over the Executive Arm of Government to the inequitable distribution of resources.
The Speaker insisted that the government’s allocation of 600 million Cedis falls short of adequately empowering the legislature to scrutinize the executive, which consistently receives allocations in the billions of Cedis.
“If the Presidency in an annual budget can take, for example, 3 billion cedis and the whole arm that is to hold the president to account is given about 600 million cedis, now how can that weak body hold that mighty executive to account, how is it going to happen?” He retorted.
Speaking at a Press Soiree in Ho, the Volta Regional capital, as part of the commemoration of 30 years of uninterrupted parliamentary democracy in Ghana, Mr. Bagbin emphasized the necessity for reforms to fortify parliamentary governance in the country.
The Speaker further noted that the challenges in overseeing the executive are exacerbated by the media’s lack of support from the government.
He highlighted the crucial role of the media in supervising all three arms of government and lamented that, in Ghana, the media is often viewed as a private enterprise with little concern for its conditions of service or accountability mechanisms.
“If the media which is supposed to hold the three of us accountable is not even catered for, the media is seen in Ghana as a private enterprise and nobody cares whether there are conditions of service or not,” He noted.
