Parliament screening amendments on National Reconciliation Bill

Members of Parliament on Tuesday began an act of screening the various amendments tabled on the National Reconciliation Bill, known in Parliamentary practice as windowing.

Papa Owusu Ankoma, the Leader of the House, said the windowing was necessary because amendments that bore similar intentions would be reconciled to make the third reading of the bill less tiresome.

Already, indications were that the House would relive the fierce and uncompromising debate that characterised the second reading as it entered the consideration stage slated for Wednesday.

The Minority had tabled various amendments to dates, duration and nature of the proposed commission as made known in their submissions during the second reading.

One glaring instance was their amendment to the long title of the bill and the proposal that the coverage should date back to 1957. The original bill excluded all constitutional regimes from the period in which the proposed commission was to investigate.

In another development, the House adopted the report of the Committee on Communications on the ratification of the Acts of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) 1999.

The ratification of the Act would enable the Ghana Postal Service to improve on their relations with other Postal Services around the world.