CPP’s petition against new Public Holidays bill empty – MP

The Vice Chairman for Defense and Interior Committee of Parliament Collins Owusu Amankwaa has described the Convention People’s Party’s petition against the public holiday amendment bill, 2018 as groundless.

Government is scrapping AU and Republic Days as public holidays, replacing them with Constitution and Kwame Nkrumah Memorial and Founders Days to be celebrated on January 7, September 21 and August 4 per the amendment bill.

According to the CPP, the Founders Day as proposed in the Public Holiday Amendment Bill by the government is inconsistent with the history of Ghana.

The most dangerous part of the public holiday amendment bill is the “disingenuous tinkering of the settled history of Ghana” on the part of the NPP government, the CPP said in a petition to parliament signed by its General Secretary James Kwabena Bomfeh Jnr.

The CPP further warned the public amendment bill will serve as a wrong precedent and a disincentive to education in the country.

The position of the CPP, however, did not resonate well with the Vice Chairman for Defense and Interior Committee of Parliament who is also the Member of Parliament for Manhyia North.

According to him, the CPP’s petition to Parliament and by extension his committee is not grounded in law.

He said: “The existing law permits the president as part of his discretionary power as it were to add to the public holidays, the president has the prerogative power to substitute if he deems it fit.

“For me this not new, except that it is even long overdue because some people really worked, they put their lives on the line for the survival of this country through liberation…If we are here to recognise them as a result of their labour, their commitment I see nothing wrong with this new proposed amendment coming from his Excellency the president.”

He added after going through the petition “I realized that they only reechoed biography of the late Dr Kwame Nkrumah. There’s nothing new in this petition so I don’t get the head and tail.”