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Checks done by the Daily Statesman indicate that the official bungalow of the Speaker of Parliament, Aaron Mike Oquaye, will be released to him at the end of this month.

He is also not part of the list of Members of Parliament who are entitled to, and have taken, rent advances.

“It is therefore not true that I have taken rent advance while occupying my official residence,” Prof Oquaye told the Daily Statesman yesterday.

The Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service is investing a number of former Ministers and deputies of the previous Mahama-led National Democratic Congress government, who are also MPs, for alleged stealing for taking double salaries while in office.

In an apparent act of seeking to do equalization, the accused MPs have also accused their counterparts from the governing New Patriotic Party, who double as Ministers, of taking rent advances, and still occupying state bungalows.

Stories published in some pro-opposition papers last week included the Speaker of Parliament in the list of appointees of the current government who had allegedly taken rent advances and still occupying state bungalows.

But it has turned out not to be the case. “I have been living in my own apartment since I became the Speaker; my official bungalow will be released at the end of this month, and I have not taken any amount for rent advance. The Speaker of Parliament is not a beneficiary of any such arrangement. The whole publication was an act of mischief, and a lazy piece of journalism. But for the mischief they sought to do, they would have had the right information,” Prof Oquaye said yesterday.