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Parliament takes seven months to answer Opposition questions
Kaieteur News – The Opposition has often lamented the extensive time taken for questions submitted to the National Assembly to receive responses by the respective Ministers.
Opposition MP, Annette Ferguson
During Friday’s Sitting of the National Assembly at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Liliendaal, Georgetown, Opposition Parliamentarian, Annette Ferguson was mocked as she stood up to question Public Works Minister, Juan Edghill on the new government office complex design. Her questions were submitted to Parliament some six months and 19 days prior.
Even her colleagues on the Opposition side of the House laughed as she ventured to question the Minister on the office complex. After being permitted to proceed with the question, she told the House that her questions were overtaken by time but she would still ask for the sake of the records.
Her first question was for the Minister to inform the National Assembly of what caused the delay in the erection of a billboard displaying the design of the Office Complex in the Houston Area. Her second question which was eventually abandoned was for Edghill to inform the House when the billboard depicting the design of the Office complex would be erected at the project site.
It would be apposite to note that Ferguson during the previous Sitting displayed the diagram herself.
Prior to Edghill standing to his feet to respond to the question, there was an outburst of laughter across the dome of the ACCC, as pupils of the Marian Academy watched in amazement.
For his part, Edghill said, “Every time we revisit this particular project, it is with a greater level of amusement that accompanies it. Mr. Speaker, the honourable Member last week, while we were answering questions that she posed, held a photograph with the billboard and then she returns to the House to ask me ‘where is the billboard?’.”
Ferguson in response to the Minister made it clear that she was not to be blamed for the question being asked belatedly and the accompanying answer. Additionally, she pointed out, “If we were meeting regularly, these questions would have been answered so don’t come grandstanding here Minister!”
Edghill in response made it clear that the government answers all questions on the Order Paper when it appears “at the appropriate time”.
Meanwhile, Speaker of the National Assembly, Manzoor Nadir commented, “The issues raised by the honourable member Ms. Ferguson has to do with the process and systems that we have for getting these questions on the order Paper and having them answered so sometimes the Chief Whips need to talk with the Clerk and the Speaker.”
Another Opposition MP, David Patterson who recently submitted questions to the National Assembly on a separate matter in an invited comment told Kaieteur News that questions are usually submitted based on the urgency of information.
He explained, “This is the mechanism we have via the Parliament to ensure that we can be updated and so obviously, it is the expectation of every Parliament that when you submit a Motion, as long as it doesn’t offend any of the Standing Orders, it is approved immediately and then the Minister has 21 days to respond.”
On the other hand, the former Minister of Public Infrastructure said that Parliament now acknowledges Motions and questions and then forwards the information to the Speaker.
Patterson noted that the matters are left on the Speaker’s desk “for quite some time and by the time it gets on the Order Paper, it is dated.”
According to him, “What it allows the government to do, as in the case we just saw, they allow them to go and hide, correct, change the information that they have to provide…so it obviously stymies the work for not only the Parliamentarians but deprive citizens of finding out exactly what is transpiring in important areas.”
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