'Not all National Service personnel in Parliament are idle'

The Director of Public Affairs at Parliament, Jones Kugblenu, has said that not all personnel of the National Service Scheme seconded to the house are idle, as suggested by news publications last week.

He told Asempa FM in Accra on Wednesday that service personnel seconded as Personal Assistants (PAs) to parliamentarians, a deal brokered between the presidency and the National Service Secretariat, are those without prescribed jobs currently.

It emerged last week that National Service personnel seconded to the House for the 2009/2010 service year are without specific roles leading to loitering, however, Jones Kugblenu explained that the suggestion cannot be entirely true.

He said yearly, the Parliamentary Service, which is the supporting wing of Parliament, requests for a certain number of National Service personnel to assist heads of the about 18 departments of the House. For this category of personnel, there is no problem with their roles, however when President J.E.A. Mills addressed Parliament early on this year, he announced a scheme to second National Service personnel as personal assistants to parliamentarians to support their work, and it is this second category whose roles appear not to be well defined.

Jones Kugblenu said the second group are not the responsibility of the Parliamentary Service but a deal brokered purely between the National Service Scheme and the individual parliamentarians, and while some MPs suggest they want to send the PAs to their various constituencies to assist with work there, others feel they must keep them in parliament to assist with administrative work.

He suggested that what may need to be done is to find out the terms of agreement the National Service Secretariat came to with the individual members, whether their location – where they have to work – is in Parliament itself or the various constituencies.