The Odododiodoo MP says the 2021 budget statement was inadequate as it failed to capture the country's birth and death records.

In his submission to the House, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye revealed that since Ghana's 4th Republic, all budgets have indicated the detailed number of birth and death, however, the recent budget failed to do so.

Speaking on the Floor of the House, he said, "Right Honourable Speaker, strangely enough from this budget, I'm hearing for the first time there was no death, there was no birth report in the country.

"In the past, every budget has told us the number of people who were registered at death and also at birth. For the first time in our history in this House and I have been in this House for quite some time, no number of death, no number of birth; meaning nobody died and nobody was born in this country."

He indicated that although page 109, columns 5,6 and 7 of the 2021 budget states the Registry projects to issue 886,426 birth certificates and 323,545 death certificates, the registered birth and death records were not captured.

"How many people were registered in 2020? How many people died in 2020?" he asked.

According to Mr Vanderpuye, it is worrying that the 2021 budget could not spell out the birth and death records especially when the 2020 budget sought approval to undertake the digitalisation of registration of birth and death records.

"In 2020, the budget asked us to approve money because they are going to digitalise the registration of birth and deaths records so that they can cover more.

"The money we gave for utilisation and expansion of the works of the birth and death registry department, what did it achieve?" he added.

In addition, he said Ghana being a signatory to the African Union Convention on civil registration and vital statistics should have prompted the need to provide a report on the birth and death registry department.

The country according to him in 2025, is supposed to be conformed with the set standards but "as we speak today, we don't even know what is happening at the department because the budget didn't tell us."

Mr Nii Lantey Vanderpuye further bemoaned that the Parks and Gardens department under the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has also been abandoned in the 2021 budget.

Citing the 2019 budget, he disclosed that the department cultivated medicinal and aromatic plant species and were distributed to communities.

"I want to ask, which communities and who are those people who were given aromatic plants to develop in this country. Strange enough, this year's budget made no reference to that activity."

He described the department as a biological child of the state being treated as an orphan.