Parliament resumed sitting on Tuesday with a call on Ghanaians to stop calling their representatives during proceedings in the House.
The Majority leader of Parliament, Alban Bagbin pleaded that constituents can only call the Members of Parliament (MPs) in emergency situations.
Addressing the House on the first sitting, Mr. Bagbin advised that constituents not to call MPs between the hours of 10am and 2pm.
According to him, that is the time MPs are called upon to focus on the work of the House.
“It’s a plea to the whole nation that they should not be calling their Members of Parliament except in emergency situations,” he said.
MPs resumed sitting on Tuesday after a month-long break for the Christmas and New Year Holidays.
For the next eight weeks, MPs will be working to pass some proposed legislation pending before the House, including the Property Rights of Spouses Bill, the National Youth Employment Bill, the Plant Breeders Bill, the Right to Information bill, amongst others.
Outlining their plans for the next two months, the Majority leader said the House has a lot of work to do within the period and called for maximum attention and cooperation of MPs.
“The fact is that we have a lot of work to do but there are others that are time bound – some are international obligations, and yesterday [Monday], we met the Police, Ministers of State and the business committee will be shaping the business of the House according to some priorities that we agreed with the government,” he explained
He also announced that the President will present to the House, the state of the nation address in the coming weeks and a supplementary budget which will be brought to Parliament will also be discussed.
“I believe that these are things that we have focus on and finish them within this meeting,” he added.
Earlier, Minority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, called on his colleagues to be punctual throughout the period.
He indicated that legislators “have to thoroughly debate and discuss issues to come to some consensus for the betterment of our dear country,” adding that “the signature issue for these meetings is the state of the nation address being delivered by the President of the Republic.”
Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu pointed out that it is important for MPs to be furnished with all documents on Government’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other financial transactions with international partners for proper scrutiny.
“We have to sufficiently interrogate the content to make very informed decisions on all the matters that will be placed before us,” he explained.
In an address to welcome MPs back from recess, Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho, used the opportunity to dismiss media reports that Parliament was broke.
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