The Minority in Parliament has criticized the allocation of GH₵33 million to the Legal Aid Commission, deeming it woefully inadequate.

The Legal Aid Commission plays a crucial role in ensuring equal access to justice by serving as a public defender for individuals unable to afford the costs of litigation.

The commission has faced longstanding issues of underfunding, leading to challenges in attracting legal practitioners from the private sector due to poor working conditions.

The Minority Spokesperson on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Bernard Ahiafor, emphasized that if the government is not serious about adequately resourcing the commission, it should consider closing the institution.

“Mr. Speaker if we want Legal Aid as an autonomous body being established by an act of parliament then with all due respect as a country we need to pay some attention to this particular institution. If we don’t want the Legal Aid Commission to exist, let us abolish it so that we know we do not have legal aid.

“To establish it with responsibility to go down to the districts, regional, not only at national with this kind of budgetary allocation, Mr. Speaker, legal aid commission is not an individual to be given a CAPEX budgetary allocation of 3 million. Goods and services to be 3 million.

“Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the legal aid, I am on my knee that the way and manner additional resources are provided for other institutions, we have to do the same for legal aid if we really want legal aid to perform its duties and responsibilities,” he said.

MP for Bia East, Richard Acheampong, has argued that the low budgetary allocation to the Legal Aid Commission has led to a lack of interest from qualified lawyers to join the commission.

This, according to him, has resulted in large portions of the country being left without the services of the Legal Aid Commission. The inadequacy of funding and limited recruitment of skilled lawyers have hindered the commission's ability to fulfill its mandate effectively.

“Together with the Attorney General’s office, many seasoned lawyers don’t want to work there because their conditions of service are very bad. And we’re pretending as if our state institution – so if you talk to somebody, ‘oh go to legal aid’, what is there?’ they can’t do anything for you.

“They don’t even have vehicles to traverse the length and breadth of this country in order to even support our people who are in need. Let’s put all the northern zone together; Savannah, Upper East, Northern Region and the rest, we have a lot of people who have cases because of financial constraints they can’t go to the court for a proper adjudication.

“And this system is not there to support these people and they can’t also travel to the south to access such facilities. So Mr. Speaker let’s be frank to ourselves and do what is right. Let’s put our money where our mouth is,” he lamented.

Despite the expressed concerns about the inadequacy of funds for the Legal Aid Commission, the House went ahead to approve 33 million cedis for the commission.