Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has attributed the challenges faced by Parliament in effectively executing its oversight role over the Executive Arm of Government to the inequitable distribution of resources.

Speaker Bagbin argues that the government's allocation of 600 million Cedis is insufficient to empower the legislature adequately, especially when compared to the consistently higher allocations received by the executive in the billions of Cedis.

Speaking at a Press Soiree in Ho, Volta Region, as part of the commemoration of 30 years of uninterrupted parliamentary democracy in Ghana, Mr. Bagbin emphasized the necessity for reforms to strengthen parliamentary governance in the country.

“If the Presidency in an annual budget can take, for example, 3 billion cedis and the whole arm that is to hold the president to account is given about 600 million cedis, now how can that weak body hold that mighty executive to account, how is it going to happen?.”

The Speaker further emphasized that the challenges in overseeing the executive are compounded by the lack of support from the government for the media.

He underscored the crucial role of the media in supervising all three arms of government and expressed concern that, in Ghana, the media is often perceived as a private enterprise with insufficient attention to its conditions of service or accountability mechanisms.

“If the media which is supposed to hold the three of us accountable is not even catered for, the media is seen in Ghana as a private enterprise and nobody cares whether there is conditions of service or not.”