Chairman of the Finance Committee in Parliament, Kwaku Kwarteng has dismissed claims that Dome-Kwabenya MP, Sarah Adwoa Safo is victimising the NPP by absenting herself from Parliament.

He said despite the backlash from some of his colleague NPP MPs, an overwhelming majority of the Majority Caucus sympathise with the Dome-Kwabenya MP as they believe she needs support.

The Obuasi West MP told Samson Lardy Anyenini on Newsfile, Saturday, that he disagrees with the claim that Sarah Adwoa Safo is undermining the Majority Caucus in Parliament and government business.

“Majority of us on the NPP side we don’t believe that so that point must be made clear…the last thing I will do is to target Adwoa Safo, she is my friend, I just don’t want to do that. I do not think you blame her to say that she is doing this maliciously, the majority of us believe that Adwoa Safo is not doing this maliciously,” he said.

Kwaku Kwarteng however stressed that despite Sarah Adwoa Safo’s situation, the constituents in Dome-Kwabenya should not be dePrived of a representative in Parliament.

He said the House cannot continue to perpetually be without a Member of Parliament who has been elected to represent a constituency.

“All of us including myself also believe that the fact that her situation rather calls for our sympathy and support does not mean that the Parliament of Ghana must almost perpetually be without a member that has been elected to represent a constituency. We must differentiate two things.

“This precedent that we will protect a situation that reduces the numbers of Parliament never mind what is causing so long as it will give us a numerical advantage, we will support, we are setting a precedent that the people of this country do not need,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil, says the Dome-Kwabenya MP was a target of a political witch hunt before her referral to the Privileges Committee over her long absence from the House.

He claimed that some individuals are making attempts to ensure her removal from office to score their political goals.

“Adwoa Safo was the target of a political witch hunt. She was the target of certain people to achieve certain very narrow political goals. But we need to go back a bit; before the last election, I was one of the lawyers working with Odekro, and we had gone to court on this same issue.

“The issue was that there were too many parliamentarians who take monthly salaries, take allowances, and they don’t go to work.

“Out of the 275 parliamentarians that we have, it is our reckoning that less than half of them go to work regularly – less than 50% go to work regularly, and less than 50% contribute to the parliamentary discourse, debates, lawmaking, et cetera.

“We think that is a high cost on this country; we need to do something about it. Some of us believe that we have too many parliamentarians; we are not getting values from them,” he said.