Minority Chief Whip, Muntaka Mubarak says the Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya, Sarah Adwoa Safo is being treated unfairly by both the Speaker and the Majority Leader in relation to her referral to the Privileges Committee.

According to him, the MP had undertaken due process to seek a leave of absence from the Speaker before leaving the country for the United States of America to handle some personal issues.

However, the Majority Leader who had received her application had refused to forward it to the Speaker.

This was at the height of the E-levy debate on the floor of Parliament and as was expected, the Majority needed a full house to be able to push the bill through successfully due to the nature of the current Parliament.

Speaking to Evans Mensah on JoyNews’ PM Express, Muntaka Mubarak said, “I think there’s a lot of unfair treatment to the lady. I’m reliably informed that she wrote leave of absence and her leadership refused to recommend it to Speaker.”

He revealed that “she wrote a leave of absence and then she traveled citing her children and challenges. And her leadership because they needed her at all cost, refused to recommend so she noticed along the line that she’s constantly being marked absent."

"So now she wrote a letter with another leave of absence directed to Mr Speaker to remind Mr. Speaker that I’m supposed to seek permission from you but the rules of this house are such that, like himself stated today, I have to pass it through my leadership, I have noticed that my leadership have consistently refused to recommend my leave of absence so I’m writing directly to you.”

However, contrary to what Muntaka Mubarak expected the Speaker to do in this instance, which is to investigate the assertion in the letter, the Speaker instead sent the letter back to the Majority Leader.

“And what the Majority Leader simply said was that 'I’m not aware'; and based on that Speaker refuses to grant her leave of absence. With the greatest of respect to the office of Mr. Speaker, I think this is very unfair.”

He said, “If I make a claim, and you don’t use your good office to investigate that but you refer my application back to the same people that have refused to grant my leave of absence if I were Mr. Speaker to be fair I would have just minuted that Majority Leader/Majority Whip can you recommend based on this complaint to me for her leave of absence to be granted.

“Because remember she has filed another leave of absence complaining about what her leadership did, so to treat her fairly, you Mr. Speaker having gotten this background you would have recommended to the leadership to recommend for her leave of absence in order not to keep them on the blindside of what is happening.”

In the meantime, the Minority Chief Whip is filing a motion to challenge the Speaker’s decision to refer Adwoa Safo and two other MPs to the Privileges Committee suo moto.