The leadership of Parliament has called on Ghanaians to subject the issue of parliamentarians’ conditions of service to open debate to settle the matter once and for all.
Parliament has reportedly made proposals to the Committee on Emoluments, appointed by President Atta Mills and requested a monthly salary of GH¢7,000 (¢70million) for its members as part of government’s move to review salaries of public office holders under Article 71 of the constitution.
Article 71 (1) (a) of the constitution states that “the salaries and allowances payable, and the facilities, and privileges available to the Speaker and Deputy Speakers and Members of Parliament…..being expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund shall be determined by the President on the recommendations of a committee of not more than five persons appointed by the president, acting in accordance with advice of the Council of State”.
However, the proposals, which Daily Guide learnt has not even been forwarded to the Presidential Committee on Emoluments, has generated a lot of heat with some sections of the public describing the MPs’ request as outrageous.
But Gershon K. B. Gbediame and Fredrick Opare-Ansah, the Majority and Minority Chief Whips respectively, who took turns to address journalists, asked for a public debate to settle the matter.
According to them, people might have been crucifying them for lack of knowledge on the matter and that disclosures could settle the mater once and for all. They did not understand why other public officers under Article 71 have presented their proposals for better conditions of service and yet it was only that of MPs that should be so condemned and even criminalized.
Other public holders that are supposed to benefit from salary reviews are the Chief Justice and other Justices of the superior court of judicature; the Auditor-General, the Chairman and Deputy Chairmen of the Electoral Commission, the Commissioner for Human Rights and administrative Justice and his deputies and District Assemblies Common Fund Administrator.
The rest are the Chairman, the Vice Chairman and other members of the National Council for High Education howsoever described; the Public Service Commission; the National Media Commission, the Lands Commission and the National Commission for Civic Education.
The Majority Chief Whip said Parliament’s proposals were subject to the review of the Presidential Committee, hoping it would take into consideration the work and responsibility of MPs as well as the value of lawmakers in deepening the country’s parliamentary democracy.
Parliament, he disclosed, was the last among institutions under Article 71 to send its proposals to the Committee and yet they were the first to be vilified in an unjustifiable manner.
Mr. Opare-Ansah, who is also the MP for Suhum, said among other incentives, members of the executive or ministers of state and the judiciary were given cars and chauffeur-driven, all of which were paid for by the state. He said District Chief Executives (DCEs), who are not elected but, just appointed by the President, were even given cars and other facilities by the state.
MPs on the other hand, he decried, were compelled to take car loans which were paid for by individual legislators.
Mr. Opare-Ansah, a former Deputy Minister for Communications, believed the nation’s legislators had not been treated fairly over the years. He could not understand why the executive and the judiciary should be treated more favourably than the legislature.
MPs, Mr. Opare-Ansah indicated, had been sacrificing over the years for the nation. “If we spend so much as a country to organise elections to elect MPs, we should be able to spend a little more to ensure they are able to work adequately for the development of the country,” the Minority Chief Whip suggested.