The First Deputy Speaker of parliament; Joseph Osei-Owusu, popularly known as Joe Wise has revealed through an interview he granted on Neat FM, the reasons for throwing out a bill that seeked to probe Covid-19 expenditure by government.
According to the Deputy Speaker, the Finance Minister; Ken Ofori-Atta had already accounted for the expenditure in the 2022 budget. He therefore indicated that the probe suggested by the minority caucus had no relevance. He added that there is an existing committee that is in charge of such tasks hence a special committee wasn’t needed as suggested by the minority members.
“My ruling was that for parliament to set up a special committee, the orders say only issues that are not in the jurisdiction of any committee of the house are those that require special committees”,he said.
“They (minority) said they want a bipartisan committee – but parliament already had the pubtic account committee which is bipartisan and it is being headed by the minority, whose job is to hold the government accountable for all of its expenditures”, Joe Wise stated.
The Deputy Speaker therefore revealed that he had no other option than to throw out the motion as it was not properly laid to the house.
