Former Dome-Kwabenya representative Sarah Adwoa Safo has received criticism from a former member of parliament for Tamale Central for missing sessions.
Inusah Fuseini asserts that despite the fact that she could have good grounds to abstain from her parliamentary obligations, she is unable to do so without first telling the House's leadership.
As a consequence, he came to the conclusion that Adwoa Safo had insulted the House by avoiding following established protocol and missing meetings since December 2021. Consequently, the former Ranking Member for Parliament's Constitutional and Legal Affairs urged the absent MP to act morally.
The Speaker or the MP's caucus must provide their consent if they want to leave the House of Representatives for more than 15 days to handle personal matters.
Adwoa Safo may have personal problems, but she needs to make use of the legal system that enables her to leave the House of Representatives for as long as those problems last. She cannot appear to be mistreating Parliament without consequence, he said.
The former legislator also questioned why, despite having the authority to do so, the Privileges Committee had not decided what to do about Adowa Safo's absence.
He said that the 1992 constitution unambiguously granted the committee the authority to make these choices. The Privileges Committee is explicitly given authority under the constitution to make decisions. The Privileges Committee has been designated in the constitution to judge whether an MP's justification for being absent for 15 sitting days is legitimate.
On Tuesday, July 19, he made these remarks during an interview with Citi FM in Accra. This comes after the troubled MP claimed that she was the target of a witch hunt.
On Sunday, July 17, Adwoa Safo accused the NPP and the Majority in Parliament of conducting a witch hunt on her in a Facebook post.
She firmly claimed that she has been the target of a long-running political witch hunt carried out by some members of the NPP and of Parliament in order to further their own narrow agendas.
Adwoa Safo expressed dismay over the disparate treatment she has received from others, including party members, for missing out on official duty to attend to personal matters regarding her kid.
She said that when she served as the Deputy Majority Leader in the last Parliament, she assisted a colleague who was in a like situation.
The conference's theme, Holding Together, Working Together, "resonates so much with my current situation and brings back memories of my time as the Deputy Majority Leader in the 7th Parliament, where, as Leader of the Women's Caucus, together with the Leadership of the Majority, we did our very best to protect a colleague female Member of Parliament who had to be away," in London for over two years to attend to family matters. The claims made by Adwoa Safo, however, have disappointed the Majority Leader.
The remarks expressed by Mrs. Safo, according to Mr. Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, are regrettable. He claims that he has personally sent his colleague multiple texts without receiving a response.
She claims that the leadership is witch-hunting her, which surprises me. It is, in my opinion, the most disappointing and horrible comment. I haven't engaged for the last two months since despite my repeated messages to her, she hasn't replied," he added.
Since December 2021, the Gender Minister has not attended a session of Parliament. Additionally, the Privileges Committee's invitations to discuss her absence from Parliament have not yet been honoured.