Parliament debates cash-for-seat’ committee report today’

Parliament will today debate the report of the bipartisan “cash for seat” committee, barely a month after the committee was formed to investigate claims that the Trade Ministry extorted $100,000 from expatriates to allow them to sit close to the President during the Ghana Expatriates Business Awards in December 2017.

The report was laid on the floor of Parliament last week Friday, after a number of postponements because a Minority member on the Committee, Dr. Dominic Ayine, had wanted to include the Minority’s separate views in the report.

The committee has since been the subject of some controversy following the Minority side’s decision to prepare and leak a separate report that indicted some persons of interests in the probe, including the Ministry of Trade and the organisers of the awards scheme, the Millenium Excellence Foundation.

The Minority side of the committee concluded that the Ministry of Trade engaged in multiple infractions including breaches of the public financial management law and multiple ethical violations.

It also said the Millenium Excellence Foundation, among other things, presented forged evidence to the committee.

Dr. Ayine subsequently called for the withdrawal of the already laid report so that a composite report will be presented to Parliament.

According to Dr. Ayine, though Minority members including himself and Deputy Minority Leader, James Klutse Avedzi had detailed their perspectives on the saga, the Majority side had refused to integrate them before presenting the document to the house.

“I was expecting the committee chairman to integrate the report I had prepared with what he had prepared but he stated that he would not integrate my report since it was titled ‘Minority report’,” Dr. Ayine stated on Eyewitness News.

Source: citifmonline.com