Parliament failing to check gov't expenditure – Min. Leader

Minority leader Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu has said the legislature is to blame for the Executive’s fiscal indiscipline.

He said parliament’s failure to exercise its oversight responsibility by scrutinising budgets brought before it has led to the perennial over expenditure of the government.

The Suame MP feels parliament “should appropriate sanctions to errant presidents or other members of the executive to ensure sanity in the financial system”.

“If parliament were to exercise its functions properly, a lot of the ills that have been afflicting this country will not arise in the first place and economic development will be guaranteed,” he added.

Mr Kyei-Mensa-Bonsu was speaking at the first symposium on law and public policy in Accra on Tuesday, 19 April 2016, on the theme: ‘Laws that work: rethinking Ghana's National Developmental Path’.

He further entreated parliament to exercise its role to check over-invoicing, under-invoicing, unbridled sole-sourcing and restrictive tendering to “save the nation millions of hard money”, which “end up in private pockets”.

He also called for the election of the right calibre of persons into parliament to enable the legislature interrogate and scrutinise laws to ensure sanity in the system.

“Are we by the conduct of business in the various political parties electing the right calibre of persons to parliament to make the relevant laws that will shape the future of development?” he questioned.

He said ministers of state appointed to “assist the president to determine policies of the government, or for the efficient running of the state,” must have the requisite “competence in the areas which the president will designate” them.

He, therefore, called on the executive to consider competence, capacity, wisdom and managerial acumen before selecting appointing ministers to beat down the ‘create, loot and share’ syndrome.