Parliament of the Fourth Republic to pass the Right To Information (RTI) Bill into an Act will amount to causing financial loss to the State.
He
believes a lot of resources have been spent by the State to facilitate
the passage of the RTI Bill into law over the last three years.
However,
failure by Members to ensure the smooth passage of the Bill, he noted,
means all the resources the government injected into the facilitation
process have gone waste.
“I have always
maintained that this Parliament must pass this RTI Bill before we rise,
it is very important. Even if it means we have to sit till night we have
to pass this Bill. Everything has been done. It is just a matter of
going through the motions now.”
“I chaired the
Committee as far back as 2013 and submitted the report. In 2014, I
proposed the amendments and because the amendments were so huge in terms
of not only numbers but content, we were compelled halfway through to
refer them to the Attorney-General to incorporate it into a new Bill.
The Attorney-General department has done that – they have relaid the new
Bill which was referred to the Committee chaired by a new Chairman now
…they have reported to the House. We’ve started the Consideration and we
are now at Clause 40 and over.”
“I mean why should we allow this to go waste? That will be causing financial loss to the State,” he noted.
Hon.
Bagbin made this observation on the sidelines of a heated argument
between the Minority Leader, Hon. Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu and the Speaker
of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Edward Doe Adjaho, over the RTI Bill on the
floor of Parliament, Wednesday, December 21, 2016.
Since
Tuesday, December 20, 2016, Hon. Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has been at the
forefront of trying to halt any deliberations on the RTI Bill,
believing that the time frame for the out-going government in pursuing
the passage of the Bill into law is too short.
He
is also of the view that because the country is in transition now, the
out-going government should not be seen to be doing some type of
business, including consideration of the RTI Bill.
But
Hon. Bagbin said because there is no law specifying or defining what an
out-going government should do and not do, it was important for the
House to be guided by experience.
Besides, the out-going government has up to the night of January 6, 2017, to continue managing the affairs of the country.
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