Leader of House in the National Assembly, George Chaponda on Tuesday forced Members of Parliament to work till the night hours following prolonged debates that caused delays in passing the budgetary allocation made to each various Government ministries and departments.
Normally, the National Assembly is adjourned at 17:00 hours each sitting day, however, this was not the case on Tuesday as the House sitting hours were extended till late in order to recover the lost time during the day.
The Committee of Supply which is the committee of the whole house began meeting on Monday afternoon to consider and pass each budget votes and Government has set target to finish with this business as well pass the budget by Thursday this week.
But at the very start of the business on Tuesday morning, passing of votes was not easy as members were debating and asking more questions pertaining to what each allocation will do in development of their respective constituencies. This caused delays in passing each vote. For example, it took over almost two hours for the house to pass Agriculture vote to the effect that as the House was breaking for lunch, it had passed two votes only.
In several instances, Deputy Speaker, Esther Mcheka Chilenje who was chairing the Committee of supply in the morning failed to guide the house. She tried in vain to guide members to ask questions that specifically points at the budgetary allocations and possibly propose for amendments but not making debates.
At one point Chilenje was furious with words from Dedza East MP, Juliana Lunguzi for saying members wants to take their time requesting for more information from Finance Minister and that if the Chair (Chilenje) was tired could ask others to help her chairing the Committee of Supply.
Chilenje was fume and called Lunguzi's remarks as "ridiculous". She then repeated to guide members that if they have problems with the budget votes they better propose for amendments and not making contributions.
"Arguing with Chair, will not yield anything" she added but the situation did not change
Later, when the House resumed sitting at 14:00 hours after lunch break, Second Deputy Speaker, Clement Chiwaya who chaired the evening part of the Committee of Supply, also in several instances said was tired with how members were proceeding with the business.
He even reached the point of asking political leadership in the House to give guidance.
People's Party (PP) Chief Whip, Ralph Jooma disclosed that members have decided to ask more questions and debate instead of proposing for amendments for the allocations because the Minister of Finance when he was winding up debate on 2016/17 budget estimates last Friday he deliberately chose not to answer to number of questions that members had asked when they were making contributions to the budget debate.
But Leader of House George Chaponda said all the questions could have been raised during two weeks that was allocated for the budget scrutiny by cluster Committees and not at this stage.
Chaponda therefore said due to the delays the House will recover the lost time by making Members finish the business around 21:00 hours.
The Leader of House in angry tone also suggested that with the kind of debate that was characterised by the Committee of Supply on Tuesday it is better that the House should scrap off the Standing Orders which provides for the ten day budget scrutiny by cluster committees.
"Later we have to scrap-off the Standing Order, they are waste of time!" suggested Chaponda
There are 57 votes in total and eleven were passed on Monday and 9 votes only had been passed by 17:40 hours on Tuesday.
As we went to publish the story, at 17:40 hours the House was in a ten minute break to allow members to prepare for the continuation of the deliberations that were starting from 17:50 hours. However, some legislators were seen walking out of the chamber.
No comments:
Post a Comment