COMMENT | Dire need to implement long-overdue reforms in the august House.
As someone who cares very much about parliamentary reform since elected as a Member of Parliament in 2008, I believe there is a need to accelerate the changes, particularly in the area of making committee work a primary task for all MPs.
Yet, this should serve as a trigger to the government to remake our Parliament more extensively than what had taken place since the change of government last year. For these committees to work, sufficient media space will need to be given to reporting the work of committees. While the MPs must improve their knowledge and understanding of policy matters, friends in the media also need to do the same to ensure accurate and easy-to-understand news.
For this current session, the committee stage of the budget started on Nov 5 and ends tomorrow, a total of 15 sitting days to clear the ministerial budget for 25 ministries. Each ministry usually gets the scrutiny between three and four hours with the exception of the really huge ministry which gets a day of scrutiny.
These arrangements will help make Parliament a co-governing body with ministers, and it will provide more detailed scrutiny and checks on the civil service running the ministries, and such institutional arrangement will also create a talent pool with policy knowledge on both sides for future ministerial appointments.Live telecast of committee work
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