This Week in Parliament

Page 42 (Mirror), June 26, 2010
By Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah
TWO sector ministers, the Minister for Local Government and Rural Development and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration were in Parliament this week to answer questions.
Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, the Foreign Minister briefed the House on the decision that had been taken in respect of Ghanaians who were killed in The Gambia in 2005.
His briefing was in response to a question posed by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Jaman South, Mr Yaw Maama Afful, who wanted to know whether compensation had been received by the government and whether the beneficiaries had been paid.
Answering the question, Alhaji Mumuni said the government of The Gambia had been absolved of any responsibility for the murder and disappearance of a number of Ghanaians in that country in 2005.
While endorsing this outcome of the joint UN/ECOWAS fact-finding panel which cleared the regime of President Yahya Jammeh of complicity, the Ghana Government also accepted a donation of $500,000 from The Gambia for the funeral and burial rites for the six exhumed bodies that had been identified as those of Ghanaians.
Alhaji Mumuni stated that the amount was given to the government when the Gambian Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Co-operation and Gambians abroad led a seven-member Gambian delegation to Accra on January 7, this year.
He said, the exhumed bodies were at the morgue of the Police Hospital and indicated that a Ghanaian pathologist at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital was helping the ministry in attempts to identify them.
The Foreign Minister said contacts had been made with individuals who claimed to be relations of the victims adding that it was the hope of the government that at the end of it all, the bodies would be identified for them to be handed over to their families for fitting burials.
He added that after their burial, the $500,000 will be disbursed to persons deemed entitled to receive the amount.
For his part, the NPP MP for Offinso South, Mr Ben Abdallah Banda, asked the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Joseph Yieleh Chireh,the number of caterers of the School Feeding Programme who have been dismissed or had their appointments terminated in the Ashanti Region from January to December, 2009.
Mr Chireh told the House that it was the vision of the government to ensure transparency, strengthen management and operations of the School Feeding Programme explaining that the operation had, therefore been decentralised.
He stated that ownership of the programme lies with the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies and it was their prerogative to engage anyone they deemed fit without recourse to the ministry.
Mr Chireh said in recent past, the MMDAs had taken steps to regularise the appointment of caterers who were formally engaged without contracts and that called for all caterers within the programme to re-apply.
He said in the Ashanti Region in particular, during the regularisation process, 30 of the old caterers refused to re-apply and, therefore, could not continue to work for the programme.
In another development, two statements were made in the House on the recent flooding of some parts of the country.
The Member of Parliament for Shai Osudoku, Mr David Tetteh Assumeng and the MP for Agona West, Mr Samuel Obodai, made the two statements on the situation at Ashaiman and Agona Swedru, respectively.
MPs who contributed to these statements called for measures to be put in place to alleviate the plight of the victims of the floods.
At the end, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mr Edward Doe Adjaho directed the leadership of the House to liaise with the government to fix a date for the House to be briefed on measures being put in place to prevent the perennial flooding of certain parts of the country.