Member of Parliament for Ahafo Ano North, Suleman Adamu Sanid, has called on political parties to set up mechanisms to assess the performance of parliamentarians.

He said there was currently no such mechanism and MPs have to prove their competence to their constituents using peripheral means such as  developmental projects and attendance at community events instead of their core legislative work.

This he says, has led to many MPs shunning their core work of legislation.

According to Mr. Sanid, a comprehensive mechanism to assess parliamentarians’ performance would allow political parties come up with incentives to ensure more active participation in parliament.

Speaking on the Joy Super Morning Show, he said; “What you do in parliament, if you go out there nobody cares about it because the parties do not have any mechanism for assessing the performance of MPs. We don’t have any mechanism, the closest that we came to was Odikro. That was the closest and it was only based on attendance.

“How can attendance be a good measure when it comes to performance? So I thought that yes the parties must put in place a mechanism for assessing MPs contribution in the house when it comes to debate, when it comes to bills, when we’re doing the consideration stage of the bills – MPs contribution, when it comes to committees, what is their role on the committees?

“Are they really attending committee meetings and contributing? Are they visiting their constituencies, are they visiting communities? Are they engaging their people – the stakeholders, how are they managing them? These are areas, metrics that we can use.”

He added that Political Parties can use the initiative to ensure that hard working MPs face no contest in their primaries and are maintained ahead of general elections.

“And if the parties decide that look this MP per our mechanism has done so well, this is the threshold he’s passed this threshold, he’s a first timer, he has a lot to offer. Such an MP, you don’t have to open that MP to any contest.

“So once you decide at that level, you can decide that look at certain level we can have a close restricted mechanism or delegates, it can be the party executives at the national and regional level to evaluate the person  and they’ll say that this person is okay let’s push the person again. Second term, third term you can open up.

“But somebody comes to parliament, only two years and then there’s a contest on the person, how do you expect the person to reorganise himself after going through a very difficult general elections and then go into another contest within two years?” he said.