Parliamentarians who arrive at the Legislative House after hours run the risk of being left stranded there come January 1st, as Speaker Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin has promised to lock the door at precisely 10 am.
The “number three gentleman of the land” claims that lawmakers who arrive late to parliament have an impact on the start of the House’s sitting, which is why the difficult decision to begin locking doors in order to increase productivity was made.
“There is nowhere in the world where the Speaker will have to go and sit and wait for MPs to come in; it does not happen. So please, from the first meeting of the fourth session of the Eighth Parliament of the Fourth Republic, at 10 am, the doors will be locked,” Speaker Bagbin warned.
He went on to say that if the lawmakers are having trouble adhering to the 10 am deadline, then they ought to come to an agreement to begin sitting in the afternoon and end later that evening.
“At 10 am, the doors will be locked. The Speaker will be in, and it will take some time before the doors will be opened. Not that they won’t be opened, but it will take some time. And so if you are not able to comply with it, let us all agree that we will start sitting in the afternoon, from 2 p.m. or 4 p.m.; the Committees will have their meetings in the morning; reports will be ready for us to consider in the afternoon; and then by the time we adjourn around 8 p.m., the traffic situation will have improved.
“Your coming to Parliament too will not be that early, so you can decide to leave at noon, and by that time, there would have been less traffic, and you won’t consume more fuel, and then you can come in. I can see that it is not easy for members to report that early for sitting, so the two Caucuses either have joint Caucus meetings or, at your level, discuss these things and come back with proposals,” the former Nadowli-Kaleo lawmaker suggested.
Speaker Bagbin made it clear that future instances of tardiness to parliament would not be accepted.
