A founding member of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe has described as shameful, the Finance Minister’s failure to show up in Parliament to render account of how government spent the Covid-19 funds.

He questioned the rationale behind what he believes to be a deliberate attempt to swerve the lawmakers.

Speaking in an interview at his residence on Friday, June 17, Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe noted that Ghanaians deserve accountability from our leaders.

“I mean this is shameful. What is he afraid of? You have had ‘x’ amount of money for a particular project, come and account for it and that’s also a problem?” he asked.

His comments are in reaction to the Finance Minister’s failure for the second time, to show up in Parliament to render account on Covid-19 funds. This is in spite of earlier assurances by the leadership of the Majority group in Parliament.

The Minority MPs are not happy about the development as they have accused him of continuous disrespect for the House.

Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin has ruled that the House will not consider any requests from the Finance Ministry until Ken Ofori-Atta appears before the House to account for Covid-19 expenditure and answer other questions from MPs.

Mr. Alban Bagbin, speaking on the floor of the House on Thursday, said the Minister must appear before the House or suffer rejection of requests from Finance Ministry.

He contended that Order 63 of Parliament’s standing orders bars a Minister from taking more than three weeks to respond to questions from the House.

But Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe is of the opnion that Parliament, especially the Speaker, must not threaten to not approve or not deliberate any request made by the Ministry before they render account.

The former NPP stalwart also expressed concern over what he describes as a deteriorating security set up of the country.

“Again, the Police Service must flush out party militias who have invaded the Service and are unable to act professionally.”

“The Police normally shouldn’t have been carrying guns around, because it’s not a force, the Police is a Service. The relationship between the Police and the citizenry should be very cordial, but I made some remarks sometime ago that setting up the so called militias by the political parties will create a problem for us and that is happening now.”

He stated that the Inspector General of Police must lead a crusade of disbanding such party militias, which he believes will make the Police Service work diligently and professionally.

“The best advice I will give is that the Police, in-fact the IGP, should advise Government for these militias to be dissolved. The moment that is done, the Police will have the power and ability to do their work as Policemen and not gun carrying Policemen.”

“Those that are supposed to be carrying guns around are the military men, but even they have no right to open fire on civilians. Their duty is to defend this nation, the Police sees to internal security and the military sees to external security. If that is allowed to operate there will be peace in the country,” he advised.