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Parliament Blamed for Poor Oversight |
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Thursday, 16 June 2011 04:50 |
GHANA’S PARLIAMENT has been blamed for not executing its oversight responsibility in checking the activities of State Owned Enterprises particularly in areas of public sector procurement resulting in the country lurking behind in its fight against corruption.
A study by the African Parliamentarians Network against Corruption (APNAC) has observed that “the failure of parliament to play its role in over sighting the activities of subvented organizations especially State owned enterprises, is a great deal of concern in the fight against corruption.”
APNAC blamed Parliament for not complying with Article 187(6) of the 1992 constitution which mandates it to set up committees to deal with matters arising from the debate of the Auditor-General’s report.
It also noted with regret the non-performance of the role assigned by Standing Order 184 to the Parliamentary Committee on Employment, Social Welfare and State Enterprises to review on continuing basis, the operations of State Enterprises with the view to determining their economic efficiency.
Presenting a communiqué on the findings of APNAC on Ghana’s Public sector procurement systems to journalists in Accra yesterday, the Chairman of APNAC- Ghana Chapter, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu indicated that Parliament had failed to effectively undertake its oversight responsibilities over state owned Enterprises because the House’s Committees are constrained in thoroughly scrutinizing activities of state owned enterprises when it comes to procurement.
Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu who is also the Minority Leader in Parliament lamented that even though per the standing orders, MPs need at least eight weeks to scrutinize a budget, they have tentatively just two weeks to do so after which the committee starts to deal with the Appropriation of the various Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
This, he said, does not give enough time for parliament to properly scrutinize the budgets and activities of MDAs.
Another concern, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu pointed out was the fact that unlike other countries where Parliament is involved in drafting budgets, the case is different with Ghana’s Parliament.
The Minority Leader said if Ghana’s Parliament had an effective speaker who could stand his or her ground on issues which involve effectively over sighting the executive, Parliament would have done better in its oversight responsibilities over state owned enterprises.
He hoped that the country will reach the stage where Parliament will elect its Speaker and not through nomination by the executive for approval, stressing this will help strengthen the Legislature in carrying out its oversight responsibilities.
Consequently, APNAC has recommended to the executive to speedily submit to Parliament, a draft Legislative Instrument (L.I) for passage into law to make the Public Procurement Act (Act 663) effective in curbing corruption in the public procurement processes.
“It is observed that the continued delay in passing the L.I. to operationalize the Law is a disincentive to the operations of the Public Procurement Authority,” APNAC said.
The study which was carried out with the support of the Ghana Integrity Initiative and the Ghana Coalition Against Corruption raised concerns and made recommendations on the scope of the Act, passage of the L.I, sole sourcing, review of the threshold, definition of corruption and sanctions among other issues.
The Chairman of APNAC, Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said in spite of the existence of many mechanism to stem the tide of corruption, it had become manifest that public procurement was becoming afflicted with corruption.
“We need a clearly defined and strong sanction regime to be spelt out to deal with defaulting officials who willfully flout of manipulate the law,” he suggested.
Kwame Osei-Prempeh, MP for Nsuta-Kwamang Bepeso and a former board member of the Public Procurement Authority said the authority made 300 million dollars savings to the country in 2007 through prudent management of the procurement processes.
It was found out that one tendering process which had been subjected to massive abuse was that of sole sourcing noting that while genuine conditions might exist to warrant the application of the said process “an unacceptable proportion of tendering under the law has been under sole sourcing.”
By Awudu Mahama
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