First Deputy Speaker of Parliament and Chairperson of Parliament’s Privileges Committee, Joseph Osei-Owusu, has dismissed claims by colleague Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya, Sarah Adwoa Safo, that she has not been invited for by the Committee.
According to him, Parliament had employed all the necessary official channels to reach the absentee MP and to serve her notice of hearing by the Privileges Committee for prolonged absence without permission.
He told Accra-based Joy News that Adwoa Safo had been written officially to through her email address, with copies sent via her WhatsApp contact and to her office.
“Subsequently, when we changed the date for the meeting, we sent another letter; as to whether she received them or not, I can’t confirm. But what I can tell you is that the Committee has formally written to her,” Joe Wise told the media on Friday, May 26.
Joe Wise added that the Committee would send another reminder to the MP because they had yet to also get a response from her.
“Because she has not responded to us, we will send a reminder. In any case, we have rescheduled our meetings; so, we will send her a reminder. In our letter to her, we stated that we’d offer the opportunity to interview her via zoom.
“We cannot confirm whether the letters sent through her secretariat have reached her. I was surprised to read that the same person through whom we sent the letter is the same person through whom the press managed to get her to talk,” Joe Wise noted.
Adwoa Safo in her first interview this year said she will be back to Ghana in due course to continue her work as a lawmaker and Minister of State but not until she had sorted family issues relating to the health of her son.
She has been in the United States since late last year catering for the son, she stated on JoyNews channel on May 26.
According to her, she was only hearing of a Privileges Committee summons from a the journalist who was interviewing her.
Source: ghanaweb
