Privileges Committee to begin sitting today over Adwoa Safo and other absenteeism cases
The Privileges Committee of Ghana’s legislature is scheduled to hold a meeting today May 25, 2022, to determine the modalities for its sittings regarding the issue of the three absentee legislators.
The Committee has been given two weeks to present a report to the house on the referral from the Speaker of Parliament on Dome Kwabenya legislator, Sarah Adwoa Safo, Ayawaso Central MP, Henry Quartey, and Assin Central MP Kennedy Agyapong, for absenting themselves for more than fifteen days from Parliament without permission.
Kweku Ricketts Hagan who is a Ranking Member on the Committee, outlined the activities of the Committee as follows:
“On the 26th of May, we will meet with Henry Quartey, the 27th of May will be the turn of Adwoa Safo, and then on the 31st of May, we will meet with Kennedy Agyapong. We will discuss the modalities at today’s meeting.”
It will be recalled that a former legislator for Kumbumgu Constituency, Ras Mubarak, petitioned the Speaker of Parliament to deal with the matter of absenteeism in the House.
He cited Dome-Kwabenya MP, Sarah Adwoa Safo; Henry Quartey, the MP for Ayawaso Central, and Ebenezer Kojo Kum, the MP for Ahanta West and Ken Ohene Agyapong, MP for Assin Central as MPs who he said had breached provisions of Article 97(1)(c) of the Constitution and Parliament’s Standing Order 16(1) which frowns on Members absenting themselves for 15 sitting days without permission from the Speaker.
Per Article 97(1)(c) of the 1992 Constitution, a Member of Parliament shall vacate his seat “if he is absent, without the permission in writing of the Speaker, and he is unable to offer a reasonable explanation to the Parliamentary Committee on Privileges from fifteen sittings of a meeting of Parliament during any period that Parliament has been summoned to meet and continues to meet.”
