Hon. Alex Afenyi Markins, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Efutu has pleaded with Ghanaians to support every concern raised by the law makers with respect to the budget, so as to unravel the mystery surrounding some expenditure of government and bring clarity to all Ghanaians.
He first of all opened his submission with a promise to his constituents and Ghanaians at large that he would make sure his actions and utterances with regards to matters that has to do with the public purse would be done devoid of partisan coloration.
�I raise this issue as a Ghanaian and would wish all the argument in this regard would be made in a non-partisan manner...government in October issued a bond certificate through Bank of Ghana (BoG) to United Bank of Africa (UBA) to procure a loan of 200million. Now this 200million loan did not go through Parliament and that is a fundamental breach of our constitution by the government�.
According to him article 181 (3) of the 1992 Constitution makes it clear that; �government cannot borrow for itself or for any authority, or anybody unless with prior approval by Parliament. So if the government wants to engage in any form of borrowing, it has to come to parliament for approval first but failed to do that in this case�.
He further explained that �the law establishing SADA stated that the authority could borrow on its own financials but in this case it was government that did the borrowing and not SADA.
Again, the law maker and lawyer from Efutu in the Central Region make it clear that he is not against any investment by the government in the guinea fowl, forestation or tractor projects because there is no law forbidding the government from doing so.
What Hon. Markins could not understand is the fact that government claims to have invested 15m Ghana cedis into the guinea fowl project aside the �Azontaba� group�s injection of 75m Ghana cedis, yet the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Savannah Acceleration Development Authority (SADA) could not produce a detailed breakdown account of the authority�s expenditure.
Hon. Alex Afenyi Markins was speaking on Accra-based Adom FM, on the issue of the guinea fowl project embarked upon by the SADA in collaboration with �Azontaba� group and the interest it has generated in the past few days due to the perceived corruption surrounding it.
He further appealed to all commentators on the issue to go about discussing it in a dispassionate and a non-partisan manner so as to bring the full facts of the matter to Ghanaians.
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