“As I speak to you, we do not have an office for the MP. The MP operates from his house. Why must it be so? We’ve been at this for so many years. We should have an office for the MP and a secretary who sits and works in the secretariat on behalf of the MP.”
Lamtii Apanga, a lawyer and politician who has set his sights on leading the NDC in the Nabdam constituency into the parliamentary election in 2024, said this when he spoke to Mark Smith on the Day Break Upper East Show on Friday, February 3, 2023.
Lawyer Apanga suggested that more work has to be done to advance and develop the Nabdam constituency. He asserted that this should start with leadership. The Nabdam constituency has been headed for the past couple of years by a person who has become self-engrossed in both his leadership style and decision-making.
A good way to begin to redefine the role of the MP is to establish and run an office on behalf of the MP. According to Lawyer Apanga, this allows for constituents to meet their representative in Parliament in a hassle-free manner.
” … so that there’s a schedule. The MP would be home from 20th to 27th and then we would all know it. When he is home, from 2pm to 4pm, he is receiving visitors and attending to people. So it is a schedule and everybody knows it. You come, you book an appointment and when it is time, you go to see him.”
“It should not be the case where you go randomly or first of all spy to see whether the MP’s vehicle is passing for you to know that the MP is in town. It could turn out that it is the driver alone who is in town,” he said.
According to Lawyer Apanga, the current MP had failed to involve the constituency in any of his development plans; a recipe that allows the MP to remain unaccountable to the people of the area.
“Another thing we need to look at is community engagement. When was the last time you heard of an engagement with the segments of communities we have? First of all, you start with the youth. First, have a youth forum where we can have the youth come out and you ask them, what are your needs? What are your plans? What are your programmes? The youth would then engage with you and give you feedback on their expectations and what they want done. You then engage them and involve them. Then come to women, then opinion leader and chiefs. As I speak to you today, today is the 3rd of February, I do not know the plans our MP and leaders have for Nabdam for 2023,” he said.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
