MPs want law on CHRAJ amended

Parliament is calling for an amendment of the act establishing the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice to enable the commission to carry out its mandate.

Members of the house made the suggestion today during a debate to pass the commission?s budget for next year.

The MPs were unhappy that some organizations and companies had failed to implement decisions taken by CHRAJ after investigations.

The MPs said it was time to give CHRAJ the mandate to fully enforce its judgments.

?Mr Speaker, year in year out we have talked about this situation ad yet nothing concrete has been done. We all know what needs to be done to empower CHRAJ to place it on a position to enforce its decision. And so the time has come for us as a House to look at this again, to find ways, even of we may have to initiate a private members bill to that effect to give them the authority to enforce their decision.?

The Commission was allocated an amount of 33 billion, nine hundred and two million cedis for next year. But the MPs said the amount was inadequate.

? Mr Speaker I have seen that for some time now the Human Rights Commission has been relegated to the background. The resources that we give them make it almost impossible for them to operate and not much is heard of them these days. I?m not surprised that a lot of professional staff has left the commission and you can see in the report that there are serious complains and that the committee is urging government to take a second look at allocations made to the commission. A lot of activities of the Commissions will not be carried out this year because of the small amount of ?33.9991 billion that has been given to the commission?, one MP said.

The house however voted to pass the allocation to CHARJ.