Ghanaian MPs cry: #BringBackOurChairs

• Posted on November 6, 2014November 6, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Some Members of Parliament (MPs) are demanding that their old chairs should be brought back into the Parliamentary chamber because the newly imported chairs from China are breaking.

The MP for Lower West Akim, Gifty Klenam on Eyewitness News insisted that the safety and quality of the new chairs from China cannot be guaranteed.

Ghanaian legislators on Tuesday resumed sitting in a refurnished chamber with new seats and other sophisticated gadgets.

After it emerged that the over 300 furniture pieces were imported into the country from China, some MPs were outraged and criticized the leadership of the House for neglecting local furniture manufacturers.

A day after unveiling their new chamber, some of the seats in Parliament have started breaking.

Gifty Klenam maintained that the old chairs “were far better as compared to this.”

She described the new chairs as “unnecessarily big and it occupies the space, it’s difficult to move around and they are just too low so when you sit on it, you can’t even see the one in front of you.”

“I do not think we are comfortable with the chairs meaning that they should bring back our old chairs into the chamber,” she demanded.

According to her, after some MPs had their seats broken, “we tried to get the Speaker’s attention but we couldn’t catch his eye so the bottom line was to get the media to report to them.”

She complained that MPs need comfortable seats to help them undertake their duties but “this one, you need to stretch your neck to see what is ahead of you, what has that got to do with the speaker being angry? I don’t think he will.”

By: Efua Idan Osam