Only 13 out of 275 MPs perform real parliamentary duties - Majority Leader

Majority Leader in Parliament and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has said most legislators are not interested in the lawmaking process in Parliament.

Members of Parliament (MPs) are elected basically to represent their constituents to make laws that will favour them and for the development of the nation.

However, the story in the Ghanaian Parliament is different as most of them are not seen especially on TV screens during debates in the House and those who are in the chamber are either seen fidgeting with their mobile phones or sleeping.

Meanwhile, most citizens have chastised their representative in Parliament for not actively taking part in the proceedings in the House.

Speaking on the back of this in an interview with Angel FM Kumasi monitored by MyNewsGh.com, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu confirmed that, the real business in Parliament is mostly done by a few legislators.

“I have said that every week we enact one law, and when you come to parliament you will realize there are about only 13 people contributing in the law-making,” he said.

“Sometimes you have less than that of those who make laws. The rest are not interested”, he adds.

Some MPs not doing the work they were elected to do - Muntaka Mubarak

Some few months ago, National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for the Asawase Constituency and Minority Chief Whip also lamented the lack of commitment to duty by some MPs, indicating that some of them come to parliament for just about 10 minutes and leave while others absent themselves for days on end, demanding that the number of MPs be reduced from 275 to 200.

Speaking to Luv FM in Kumasi recently, the legislator called for a biometric system to check attendance fraud where MPs hire staff to sign them in as present when there are absent and sometimes even outside the country.

“Some of our MPs are not doing the work they were elected to do. Sometimes you have people just walk in and walk out; some don’t pay attention to the details when it comes, simply because their attention is somewhere…”

“If I had my way, I would have said that let us reduce the constituencies to 200 and the other 75 we leave it for the political parties based on the results that we get from the election. Then we have a strict criterion, for example, minimum education will be a degree, experience of not less than 15 years, etc so that a certain caliber of people from the political parties can be decided on. Then these people become the third component or better still use it for affirmative action,” he suggested.