The Minority caucus on the Appointments Committee of Parliament has accused Energy minister-designate Boakye Agyarko of attempting to bribe them, to clear him, following his edgy vetting.
According to a member of the minority, Mahama Ayariga, the chairman of the committee handed them some monies and claimed it was coming from the minister nominee, but they rejected it.
“On Tuesday, you know we had the Appointments Committee sitting to consider a number of nominees and at the end of the sitting, we normally have our own close door meetings to evaluate various nominees who appear before us…and I think some members raised the issue of our allowances for sitting beyond the normal hours and then working during the weekends.
“The chairman of the committee assured us that he had prepared a memo and he is going to access funds to pay the sitting allowance of members, so we were expecting that, so I think either yesterday or a day before yesterday, our chief whip called us and said that the chairman has brought some money and so we should pass by and take our money, so we passed by and individually we were given GHC3000 each which we assumed were the allowances due us as committee members so somehow yesterday, we started hearing certain rumours that it wasn’t the allowances that should be given to us from parliament but from other sources, so this morning, we had a meeting and during the meeting we raised the issue with our chief whip and asked him what was the source of the money and he said he was going to check with the chairman because he had also assumed that it was sitting allowances, ” he told Radio Gold in an interview Friday.
He continued: “So we raised the issue this morning and he said he had met with the chairman and the chairman said it was from Boakye Agyarko, who is a nominee, whereupon, we as minority said we are not interested in this money”.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ayarko has denied the claim in an interview with Starr News’ Wilberforce Asare at the Flagstaff House, where the President is expected to swear in his first batch of ministers.
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