Speaker Explains Reconvening Of House

The Speaker of Parliament, Mr Edward Doe Adjaho, says the postponement of the reconvening of the House is as a result of repair works carried out on the roof of the Chamber and the need to give some committees time to complete assignments.

He said a severe rainstorm ripped off the top layer of the roof of the chamber, a situation which would have made sitting impossible.

He added that the leadership was also compelled to give more time to select committees to complete and submit their assignments and reports to the leadership before the commencement of the current meeting.

Welcoming members to the House yesterday after a break that lasted more than eight weeks, the Speaker said the chamber would have been flooded but for a second layer of roof over it.

According to him, Parliament had to quickly find resources to repair the roof.

With regard to the committees and their need for more time to complete their work, he reminded the House of his directive to all Parliamentary Committees with outstanding referrals to ensure that their reports were ready before the resumption of the House.

He said unfortunately, the committees had not met the deadline at the time the House was scheduled to resume work.

“We were compelled to invite the chairpersons and ranking members of those committees a week ago and to provide the necessary resources to enable them to complete their assignments and reports for submission to the House before the commencement of this meeting today, so that we could launch straight into serious business, ” he said.

Mr Adjaho said the present meeting may be short but was packed with legislative business and appealed to ministries, departments and agencies of government to respect the time table of the House and submit their respective businesses which required parliamentary approval or consideration timeously.

He also urged members to be punctual and co-operate with him.

Failure of Parliament to resume on two scheduled dates triggered a lot of media speculation.

Some MPs, especially those on the minority side, attributed it to lack of financial resources for the House to carry out its business.