Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga Central Constituency Isaac Adongo has revealed that he turned down an invitation to a meeting with the finance minister in Washington in the United States of America (USA) recently.
The deputy ranking member of the Finance Committee of Parliament in an interview on Dreamz FM in Bolgatanga monitored by MyNewsGh.com narrated that the meeting was called by Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta ahead of a major stakeholder engagement with an agency that pulls a lot of funds to Ghana.
According to him, the finance minister has over time demonstrated an unwillingness to engage with the finance committee and members of the minority on major issues, hence he found it strange that such a meeting will be called shortly before an engagement with the investor agency which called the meeting and paid for the trip.
“When we went to Washington he (Ken Ofori-Atta) invited us to a meeting at Renaissance Hotel in Washington, I refused to attend the meeting. You work with me in Ghana, you have never invited us as a team to a meeting, and you never discussed your problems with managing this economy with us and sought our solutions. Somebody pays for me to attend a meeting in Washington and because am about to engage Agencies that you fear if I speak what I speak you may not be comfortable, you want to manage my thought process?” He questioned.
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Mr. Adongo explained that the supposed meeting with the finance minister was in his assertion an attempt to manage the thoughts of him and other members of the committee ahead of the crucial meeting with the foreign agent.
“If you really think that I am a player and an important key stakeholder in the governance of your finances, that is not where to do it. It just didn’t make sense to me and in any case, it was not he the finance minister who brought me to Washington. You cannot come and meet your deputy ranking on finance in Washington when you have never met him in Ghana” he said.
The Bolgatanga Central MP bemoaned what he described as a lack of engagement on the part of the finance minister, therefore it would have been ethically wrong for him to accept the invitation to meet with the minister.