Anti-LBGT bill: We're financially handicapped - Chair of committee considering bill

The Chairman of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, which is considering the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021 (Anti-LGBT bill), has said that the committee is financially handicapped.

Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi, in an interview with JoyNews, monitored by GhanaWeb, said that the committee has exhausted all its meeting quotas.

He added that the committee could not meet the expectations of Ghanaians to work on the bill within days because that is not the modus operandi of Parliament.

Anyimadu-Antwi, who is the Member of Parliament for Asante Akim Central, however, noted that the committee now needs only one meeting before it can write its report to the plenary.

"We have done a lot on this bill. What is left now is probably one sitting and our report will be written... People had the belief that this bill was going to be passed in the next three… (but) parliament doesn't work like that.

"But the truth of it is that now, even committee meetings, we have actually exhausted our quota as a committee. And I'm having difficulties because all the meetings that we held, the public meetings, we used our committee money in conducting those public hearings, so we are financially handicapped," he said.

The MP added that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Godfred Dame, has also given us advice on the bill to Parliament, which the committee wants to hear him on.

"We are looking for a window of opportunity to invite the attorney general, and he will take us through the advice that he has given Parliament. Remember that he is the minister of justice and the attorney general," he said.

The Member of Parliament (MP)

for Ningo Prampram, Sam Nartey George, and eight other MPs sponsored the Anti-LGBTQI Bill on the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights that proscribes activities of the LGBTQ+ community.

If passed, persons who are found culpable of violating the provisions of the bill are likely to suffer prison terms including 10 years.

Watch the second part of Elvis Afriyie Ankrah's interview on GhanaWeb TV below:

Also watch the nomination for the GhanaWeb Excellence Awards Youth Edition below:



IB/SEA