The Majority Chief Whip, Frank Annoh-Dompreh, has cautioned his Minority colleague, Alhaji Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka, to be cautious in his criticism of the government over the disbursement of monies for Parliamentary business.
Speaker Alban Bagbin declared on Friday, May 27, that Parliament lacks the financial resources to support certain of its functions.
He blamed the situation on the Ministry of Finance's failure to transfer the necessary monies to Parliament.
"Parliament is now operating in arrears, and the House should not be viewed as one of the MDAs," he stated. The Speaker's allegation was disproved by Majority Chief Whip Frank Annoh-Dompreh, who revealed at a press conference that an outstanding sum of GH25 million allocation for goods and services had been issued at the same time the Speaker was informing the world the institution was broke.
In response to Annoh-rejoinder, Dompreh's Muntaka stated that the GH25 million allocation for goods and services for Parliament was to settle arrears, and that Parliament had not received any funding this year except salary.
"It is not accurate for someone to state that other from salary for 2022, no release has been made," Annoh-Dompreh said on Joy FM's Top Story on Monday.
"The delay he is aware of... is due to us as an institution collating data, some MPs changing their accounts, some MPs making changes to their data that we needed to supply, and it took some time before we supplied this data to the National Health Insurance Authority, and once it was done, the payment went through," he explained.
The delay in the transfer of funding and wages, according to the Member of Parliament for Nsawam-Adoagyiri, is due to administrative issues.
"I am not a fan of the drama that our colleagues are describing. These snafus are nothing new. I believe they are exaggerating the situation, but we are taking it in stride," he responded.
As a result, Annoh-Dompreh invited the Minority to criticize, but only "with a modicum of care."