Reshuffled Ministers must be vetted – Majority, Minority Leaders

Majority and Minority Leaders in Parliament are pushing for amendment of the constitution to require ministers who are reshuffled from one Ministry to another to be vetted by the House.

Currently, ministers can be swapped without Parliamentary approval.

The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu during an emergency sitting in Parliament on Monday argued that vetting of a reshuffled minister will reveal his or her competences and knowledge of the new ministry ahead of he or she taking up the new position.

“For instance Mr Speaker it is the pleasure of the President to swap the ministers sitting by each other, Mr Ken Ofori Atta appeared before Parliament’s Appointment Committee to demonstrate his competences for finance, so if he’s asked to move to Monitoring and Evaluation must you just walk with your bag and baggage without reporting back to Parliament? Our new Standing Orders must seek to right some of these wrongs.”

“We must put in much more consideration in appointing or nominating a person in the first place so that no ministry becomes a turf for trial and error. You go there, if you perform you stay, if you don’t perform and you have to be changed you have to come back to Parliament. I think that it will improve our governance architecture so technically I agree with him and I believe that we ourselves as a House will have to come to some determination,” Majority Leader, Osei-Kyei Mensah-Bonsu added.