The Fundraising Coordinator of Amnesty International Ghana, Samuel Agbotsey has called on the membership of the Constitution and Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament to settle their differences amicably while they work towards fine tuning the Anti-LGBT+ bill.

According to him, the seeming impasse between members of the Committee and the Chairman does not bode well for the processes needed to ensure that the bill when finally passed will stand the test of time.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, he said “If you look at the quantum of memos that have been submitted to the Committee alone tells you how this bill has generated local and international attention. And so a law to be that has generated this amount of controversy, this amount of interest from individuals, from groups and societies both local and international you would want to take your time and do a job that could stand the test of time.

“This bill is not one of those bills that you could just scratch through within 3, 4 months it is passed. We would have loved that we probably exercised a bit of restrain to allow the committee to consult much more broader. Our only disappointment is the disagreement between the Chairman and the membership of the Committee.”

He noted that the division within the Committee could affect the work done on the bill leading to important issues in the document left unanalyzed which could cause future regrets.

He thus called on the Chairman of the Committee to reach out to both sides of the divide and keep them in the know of what is happening concerning the bill.

“This is not a bill the Committee should be divided over how to go about it because they need a lot more concentration and unity of purpose and togetherness to have a law that is representative of the needs and aspirations of Ghanaians.

“But it looks as if they’re divided, the Chairman is not carrying the committee members with them and that is a bit of a concern to us so that we do not divide ourselves in terms of this bill and then at the end rush into the bill and later regret that we should have considered this, considered that and so on.

“So our appeal to the Chairman is to reconsider his approach and attempt to carry the entire committee with him so that we have a serene state of mind to do a thorough job,” he said.