Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament has again made some significant proposals to ensure that the business of the House is conducted for benefit of Malawians.
The weeklong meeting of the Committee has mainly made changes that are minimizing amount of time wasted during the period of National Assembly Meeting.
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| Chakhwantha |
Chairperson for the Committee, Peter Chakhwantha said in an interview after finalizing the review exercise of some of Standing Orders that the changes made are of great significance.
“Of greater significance that so far, what we have done is to review areas that we felt that Parliament has really struggled in terms of its procedural matters." He said
"You recall that there was a time when the Speaker had bemoaned the fact that a lot of hours are wasted with some breaks in between the meetings and there was a need for us to relook into time schedules.”
Chakhwantha then disclosed that the Committee has discussed and agreed that the sitting for Wednesdays must start from 09:30 hours till 17:00 hours instead of starting from 14:00 hours as it is the case now.
“Another thing for Wednesday is that we have decided that it will just be a day for bills, so, Government will be allowed to flood the House with many bills as they would want.” He said
And for Thursday’s, he continued “is Private members day, but what we have noted is that Government would actually flood the House with a lot of business on Questions to Ministers for Oral replies, so, we have decided to scrap off that one and it will just be dedicated for Private Members Business. And by this we are talking about Private Members Motions, Bills and whatever any private member would want to bring. So effectively it is taking away that part where Government would still want to have a hand in the business of Thursday.”
Chakhwantha said since members come from far places, the committee has resolved to maintain time for starting business for Mondays which is 14:00 hours and that on Fridays time to adjourn the House remains at 12:30 hours to allow members travel back home in god time.
“We have also looked into the issue of absenteeism. We have mandated the secretariat as our consultant to come up with stiff measures that are going to arrest this malpractice where members would pocket allowances and yet not attend the deliberations. So we are going to come up with proper measures to arrest that development.” He confirmed
Among others, Chakhwantha said the committee has also proposed that times for health breaks be minimized to allow more participation of members in debates as well putting in the Standing Orders the ‘Cluster System’ a newly adopted procedure for budget scrutiny.
On Impeachment of Deputy Speakers he said the Committee also come up with the impeachment procedures of Deputy Speakers by adopting and copy what is already provided under the procedures for the removal of Speaker and President.
He mentioned that these procedures will be applied with emphasis on the “right to be heard first before one is condemned.”
He then clarified; “We started to discuss some of the procedures around this issue some time back in July 2015. It is mot true that we just started this because of some issues that happened with our current deputy speakers.”
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