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The Member of Parliament for Old Tafo, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, has made an instance for the retention of long-serving Members of Parliament in your house.
Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei is not going back to Parliament because he failed to oppose in the New Patriotic Party’s parliamentary primaries held in June 2020. The outbound MP who doubles as a Ranking Member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Financing had been in Parliament since 2005.
Speaking on Citi FM’s political election programme dubbed Voters’ Diary on Tuesday, Dr. Akoto Osei urged that keeping the “experts” in Parliament is necessary to improve parliamentary service as well as grooming the inexperienced MPs.
“I think that it is necessary to keep some of the old hands around…I suspect that initially there’ll be a little gap but one of the things I tried to do in Parliament was to try and also mentor other people to take after us when we leave and I think in my case I can say there are people who are picking up,” he said.
Dr. Akoto Osei informed the host of Voters’ Diary on 97.3 Citi FM, Abena Nyamekye Ampadu, that he had taken it upon himself to advise some debutants.
Dr. Akoto Osei further lamented the absence of seriousness attached to legislative work by most MPs in current times.
“Majority of parliamentarians now don’t appear to want to concentrate on parliamentary work in terms of who is there, who is not there; who is participating in the debate, who is not. I don’t see that like when we first went to Parliament. We assume that if you are an MP you need to be active but I don’t see that anymore,” he lamented.
“We have to have a decent way of keeping some of the old hands to stay by providing some incentive to make it worth their while and also insist that MPs do play their role,”.
Although he reposed confidence in the continuing MPs and debutants, he believes the experience as well as expertise of the “old hands” can still be beneficial to the House.
According to the lawmaker, it takes about two terms of being in Parliament to acquaint themselves with process of the House.
Source: Ghana Waves