Prof. Mike Ocquaye calls for additional seats in Parliament for women

Speaker of Parliament Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye is calling for more seats in Parliament in order to make room for more women Members of Parliament.

According to the Speaker, it becomes a bit difficult for women to win seats that they contested together with their male counterparts, hence, there is the need for room to be made for women to contest among themselves.

Professor Oquaye made this suggestion while addressing some selected journalists in Accra on November 12, 2018.

“I have a…suggestion in papers I presented several years ago, that for example when you say that seats must be taken from men to women, and you ask for a political parties’ quota, the men get jittery that people are coming to take their post.

“But if you create the additional seats for women, for example, 30, 40, 50 seats for women only to compete on the various political parties in addition to what women can win in the normal post, you find that automatically you have 30 women coming in addition, 40 women coming in addition, and then you supplement what is already there,” Professor Oquaye advocated.

He stated that it is within the right of women to be well represented in house of legislators, and that, measures ought to be put in place in order to allow women to have what is due them.

“Women representation is a right. The women form 51% of the population and throughout the world; we are number 143, very shameful by the index released by the Inter-parliamentary Union for this year.

“We do not want Ghana to place 143 when countries like Rwanda, Burundi, South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, Senegal, Zimbabwe and others are all beating us to it. It is not like European countries only, because even in Africa we are miserably on the lower side.”

According to the Speaker of Parliament, the issue of women representation ought to be seriously catered for.

He added that the contribution of women cannot be undermined when it comes to issues bordering on welfare and social issues.

Professor Oquaye also said Parliament will concentrate on women when the house resumes in January 2019.

He said the Affirmative Action Bill will be looked at in an effort to give women more opportunities.