The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu is advocating for the passage of a law to prevent governments from starting new projects they have not secured adequate funding for.
According to him, this will prevent the phenomenon of uncompleted and abandoned projects scattered all over the country.
Mr. Iddrisu made this known at the post-budget workshop hosted in the Volta Regional capital, Ho, for Members of Parliament.
The workshop is to help legislators to analyse the 2021 budget.
He said such a law is urgent and will be critical to ensure value for investments the state makes in projects.
“There are many ministers who initiate projects even when there are no budgetary allocation or provision for it. It’s about time we (Parliament) say no to that. No project should commence unless it is supported by adequate availability of funds for its initiation and completion,” he said.
“…The most instructive of the 2021 budget was its theme which is economic revitalization through completion, consolidation and continuity and I should urge you as colleagues (MPs), to be encouraged to cause the theme of the budget to sit within the meaning of Article 35(7) of the 1992 constitution, and it won our hearts that there is a policy decision to complete outstanding projects. That is how it should be and this should necessarily improve those outstanding projects initiated by the NDC under former President, John Dramani Mahama. But that reminds me, Mr. Speaker, even though Ghana has passed the Public Financial Management Act, we need to do more.”
The Tamale South legislator however said the 2021 budget presented to Parliament last Friday is without hope and therefore urged Ghanaians to brace themselves for more hardships.
“There is no hope. Ghanaians must brace themselves up for increased hardship and increased suffering because it means that there will be petrol hikes with ESLA that they [NPP] described a few years ago as a nuisance tax,” he said.
Source:Fiilafmonline/CitiNews
