Hajia Alima Mahama
The Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2018 seeking to amend the constitution for the election of metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) was laid in Parliament yesterday by a Deputy Attorney-General, Joseph Dindiok Kpemka, on behalf of the Attorney-General.
The bill is seeking to amend Article 242 of the Constitution, which talks about the constitution of the various assemblies and Article 243, which gives the President the sole responsibility to appoint all MMDCEs to perform day-to-day executive and administrative functions of the assemblies, and also act as the chief representative of the central government in the district.
After the first reading, the bill was referred to the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee by the First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu, who was presiding, for scrutiny and report to the plenary for further consideration and approval.
It’s expected that the referendum on the election of the MMDCEs will be held in September, this year, alongside the district assembly elections.
Parliament yesterday approved a $14 million loan facility to support the financing of the de-risking of the agriculture value chain system in Ghana, which will be implemented through the Ghana Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL) project.
The project, which is structured to support agriculture across the country, will de-risk the agricultural sector, as well as promote incentives and enablers in agriculture financing.
All the MPs were in support of the facility.
The whole project will be partly financed by the loan facility and the Bank of Ghana (BoG) which will commit GH?200 million towards it.
However, Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, raised some concerns about the implementing body for the project.
He said that GIRSAL is not a legal creation or creature of Parliament so executing such an important project through it would not allow the House to have proper oversight.
He also questioned why the government should be going for such a facility to support farmers financially when the Agricultural Development Bank (adb) had been established for that purpose.
The chairman of the Food and Agriculture Committee in Parliament, Kwame Asafu-Adjei, said adb should rather support farmers financially to expand production instead of financing the importation of rice from abroad.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr