Speaker Alban Bagbin has directed all Members of Parliament (MPs) to end their recess and return to the House for an “urgent parliamentary business.”

The urgent parliamentary business is scheduled for Tuesday, May 2, 2023, per the statement from the Office of the Speaker dated April 20, 2023.

“I, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, Speaker of Parliament, do hereby direct that Parliament shall notwithstanding anything to the contrary, be recalled from recess to sit on Tuesday, the 2nd day of May 2023, at ten o’clock in the forenoon, at Parliament House, Accra, to consider urgent parliamentary business,” the statement read.

Rt Honourable Alban Bagbin gave the instruction in exercise of the power conferred on the Speaker by order 42(3) of the Standing Orders of the Parliament of Ghana.

The said order states that “Mr. Speaker may, if he thinks fit, call a Sitting of the House before the date or time to which it has been adjourned or at any time after the house has been adjourned sine die.”

Meanwhile, the agenda for the urgent parliamentary business is yet to be made public.Parliament went on recess on March 31, 2023, after passing government tax bills which have been assented to by President Akufo-Addo per reports from Information Minister, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah.

Prior to that, the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee of Parliament recommended that the House pass the controversial Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021 popularly referred to as the “anti-LGBTQ bill”.

“Pass into law, the Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021, subject to the amendments proffered by the Committee,” a part of the 18-page document signed by the Committee’s Chairperson, Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi, read.

Source: The Independent Ghana| Andy Ogbarmey-Tettey