Submit flagship programme documents to Parliament – Minority demands

The Minority in Parliament has reiterated its demand for the government to present the policy documents related to its flagship programmes to Parliament for thorough examination.

The caucus asserts that none of the eleven flagship initiatives introduced thus far by the Mahama administration has been submitted to the House for review — a circumstance they claim undermines Parliament’s oversight function and denies the public access to information regarding these initiatives.

During a press briefing in Parliament on Sunday, October 26, the Ranking Member on the Economy and Development Committee, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, called on the government to provide the documents for parliamentary assessment.

“As of now, you have 11 programmes and initiatives that this government has launched on various platforms and Ministers have been given hundreds of millions of Ghana cedis ostensibly to go and execute them.

“I can take you through the list: The One Million Coders Programme, The 24 Hour Economy Programme, The Jobs Export Programme, The Adwumawura Programme, The National Apprenticeship Programme, The Tree for Life Programme, Accra Reset Programme, The One Child One Tree Initiative, The Ghana Infrastructure Plan, The Free Tertiary for Persons with Disability and then The No-Fee-Stress Policy.

“These are about 11 programmes that the government has launched and our argument is that not one of them has had a programme document that tells you, what is the target, what is the selection criteria, what is the result framework, what are the key performance indicators, so that you can exercise oversight. Even if not just by us Members of Parliament, you the media do you know details? Do Civil Society members know the details? Does the general public know? How does even an ordinary person know and access? So it is important that the programme documents are properly laid before parliament so that the work of oversight can start.

“My intelligence suggests that it’s even been discussed at Cabinet and the President has instructed that the Ministers should bring the programme documents to parliament. So I think it’s important, we don’t have to run away from it. The programme documents need to come so that now parliament is ceased with it and then oversight can start,” he said.