Parliament suspends sitting second time to correct mistakes in STX Report

Accra, Aug. 3, GNA - Parliament on Tuesday suspended its sitting for the second time to allow a Joint Committee of Finance and Works and Housing to analyse the STX Housing Agreement for it to be due for laying.

The House had earlier suspended its sitting for three hours to allow the Committee to look at the Report but it again ran into difficulties when it reconvened at 1800 hours.

Mr Doe Adjaho, First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, suspended the House again because the earlier Order Paper did not capture the Off-Taker and the Joint Venture Agreement, which were to be laid before the Agreement could be carried.

Also, a report of the Joint Committee on Finance and Works and Housing on the restated and amended Off-Taker Agreement between the Ghana Government and STX together with the Joint Venture Agreement that should have been ready, still had some technical and legal problems with them.

Mr Cletus Avoka, The Majority Leader, appealed to the Members that "it is possible to make mistakes and there are material omissions on Motion Number 26 on the Order Paper of today (August 3, 2010) in which two of the agreements are not captured but were extensively discussed at the Committee level".

He called on the House to allow the papers to be laid since it was because of the papers that they had to suspend sitting and asserted that there was consensus among the Leadership, pointing out that a lot of work had been done on them.

Mr Ambrose Dery, The Deputy Minority Leader, said in view of the legal issues raised, the Legal and Constitution Committee should be added to the Joint Committee.

He said the STX Loan was the largest single agreement in the history of the country and must be treated with much seriousness, adding that distributing papers to Members did not constitute laying them.

Mr Dery said reason must prevail and that one hour suspension to consider such a serious report was a problem and noted that the Report was before the Committee for 13 days and the two matters -the Off-Taker and Joint Venture Agreement - had become the subject matter of a court action.

Mr Edward Doe Adjaho in the face of the sharp disagreement and the insistence of the Minority agreed that the Joint Committee should go out for an hour to consider the Report for it to be laid.

This made some Members to bang the tables and to shout: "No way! No way!! No Way!!!"

The STX Loan Agreement when passed would enable the Government to provide of 30,000 units of accommodation for the Security Services.

The House deferred the debate on the Agreement on Monday to allow the Joint Committee ample time to take a further look at it.

At the time of filing this Report the House had not reconvened.