Sessional address has exposed liars and detractors - Sowu

Accra (Greater Accra), 22 Jan. '99 -

Debate on the President's Sessional address continued in parliament yesterday with Squadron Leader Clend Sowu describing it as an address with a vision.

Commenting on four aspects of the address - productivity, quarterly review, decentralisation and the Keta Sea Defence Project - the member said the ''liars and detractors'' using the Keta project have been exposed and that the programme is on course.

He said the project will definitely come off ''otherwise I do not see how I will have the guts to present myself for re-election come the year 2000'', adding that members of the minority who are using the project to make inroads in his constituency will be disappointed.

''Next time you go to Tegbi, just be careful!,'' the member said to the minority group who, he claimed, are using the project to detract his supporters. This comment attracted a point of order from Mr Kwamena Bartels, minority spokesman on Works and Housing, who was of the view that the minority group has been threatened with that comment.

However, Mr Justice Daniel Francis Annan, Speaker ruled that Mr Bartels could react to that statement when he gets the chance to contribute to the debate.

Squadron Leader Sowu gave a chronology of events about the project from 1994 through the time that the President cut the sod for the work to begin in 1996, to the recent remarks in the address and said that the President has not deceived the people of Keta as being alleged by some members of the minority

In the address, President Rawlings said among other things, that work will start in earnest this year after the Exim Bank's approval of the technical appraisal and its readiness to provide full financing of the foreign component of the project.

Squadron Leader Sowu welcomed the quarterly economic review mentioned by the President and suggested that parliamentary committees should also be made to report quarterly on the performance of their sectors.

He quoted from a 1953 document which spells out guidelines for budget preparation and said those guidelines should be reintroduced if they have been removed from the books to check corruption and improve on work ethics.

The member called for the implementation of the establishment of full complement of decentralised departments for the sub-metro's, municipal and district assemblies as well as a review of the distribution of the common fund.

He said high productivity could be attained if all are encouraged to play their respective roles in society.