Efforts being made to convene parliamentary sitting this week
-Speaker says ‘tough decisions’ will have to be made as vaccine uptake by staff lags
Efforts are ongoing to finalise arrangements for a sitting of the National Assembly to be held this week despite the continued reluctance of Parliament Office staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19, Speaker Manzoor Nadir has said.
Against this background, Nadir told Stabroek News on Friday that Parliament Office will be forced to make some tough decisions.
“The vaccination rate of staff is still below average but we will have to make some tough decisions. Staff will have to be tested every week and we must find means to deal with those who refuse to be vaccinated or regularly tested,” Nadir stated.
The National Assembly has not convened a sitting in almost three months.
Nadir explained that the number of support staff needed for a sitting remains the same, whether the sitting is held in person, virtually or via some hybrid means and therefore it is essential that proper precautions are taken.
There have already been at least two outbreaks of COVID-19 among staff at the Parliament Office, with 14 testing positive last November and five in April. Following the second outbreak it was announced that all sittings of the Assembly and Parliamentary Committees would be suspended and that the Speaker would give approval for virtual meetings of committees when he was satisfied that all members have access to the internet so that they can fully participate.
Nadir said that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Region Nine still do not have reliable service. He noted that two weeks ago the Parliament Office was on track to deploy the service to the two members but flooding in the region has delayed it.
“We were ready to deploy last week but the flood delayed us and now we are not sure but we are working with June 1 as a deadline to have all systems in place,” Nadir stated.
His comments came a day after the main opposition APNU+AFC reached out to several parliamentary organizations in an attempt to pressure government to convene a sitting.
In a letter copied to President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union Duarte Pacheco, ParlAmericas President Blanca Ovelar and Secretary General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Stephen Twigg, Opposition Chief Whip Christopher Jones noted that there had
not been a sitting since the March 4 passage of the 2021 budget.
“The date of this correspondence marks 85 days since the last sitting of the National Assembly [and] there is no indication from the Speaker of any intended date for another sitting,” Jones wrote.
He informed that during this “forced closure” of the National Assembly, 487 questions for oral and written replies have been submitted by the opposition MPs on matters of health, security, governance, environment, education, economic and international relations and they remain unanswered.
“Additionally, the High Court of Guyana has ruled that two Members of Parliament appointed as Parliamentary Secretaries by the Government are unlawfully appointed and despite the service of order of court upon the Speaker he has taken no discernible steps to remove those persons as Members of Parliament,” Jones added before imploring the organisations to urge the preservation of parliamentary democracy by encouraging the prioritisation of regular sittings of the National Assembly.