General News of Thursday, 6 February 2020

Source: starrfm.com.gh

Minority demands withdrawal of agreements for Pwalugu dam

Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu

The Minority in Parliament has demanded the withdrawal of three agreements for the construction of the Pwalugu Hydro and Irrigation dams.

The NDC MP’s argue the decision by the speaker to refer the agreements to the finance committee for scrutiny was wrong.

Speaking to Starr News ranking member for the committee on roads and transport Governs Kwame Agbodza insisted the referrals should have been made to the Mines and Energy Committee as well as Food and Agriculture respectively for proper scrutiny.

He said, “the agreement that came to parliament is a commercial agreement and if you look at today’s order paper Tuesday 4th February, the committee of finance was supposed to have met on the 23rd of December between 9:30 pm and 10:30 pm and considered this agreement.”

He indicated their first concern was that the agreement was a commercial agreement and should go to the subject matter committee. “So if it’s to build a hydro dam, it should go to the mines and energy committee, and if it’s for the building of the irrigation it should go to the Agric committee, so the referral was wrong in itself,” he said.

“And if you look at it the total sum of the amount involved in this project is almost a billion dollars. The time the meeting started is supposed to be 9:30 and ends at 10:30, I don’t believe that there is any committee that can sit on three different major contracts within one hour and pass all these agreements,” he added.

He further said, “that is why I was raising the issue that if there was a problem in terms of the time they took that is captured in the vote and proceeding, they should correct it, but they are insisting that it was the right time they used.”