Opposition parties call for parliament to resume duties

Opposition parties are calling for parliament to resume all its duties and operations as the country has entered lockdown level 1.

According to Congress of the People (Cope), there is no reason for Parliament to wait as all other institutions including schools have resumed normal operations.

Last Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that South Africa would ease lockdown restrictions as coronavirus infections started to decline.

Spokesperson Dennis Bloem says Parliament must get its act together.

“Now that the country will go back to level one-we also expect that parliament will go back in full swing. Parliament must operate in full sessions. Parliamentary committees must meet. There is no more need for them to meet virtual. If schools, churches and almost everything is going back to normal-we don’t see why this very important institution called parliament can’t go back to normal.”

The United Democratic Movement reiterated Cope’s call to reopen parliament.

Opposition parties are adamant that Parliament should resume all its normal functions in line with institutions in the rest of the country. UDM Chief Whip Nqabayomzi Nkwankwa says it is long overdue.

“While the highbred model has served its purpose and has helped to ensure that parliament was able to deal with its business with difficult circumstances, it has proven to be very difficult at times in seeking to hold members of parliament to account. Parliament needs to resume its normal business so that members of the executive are able to account to parliament to physically attend to parliament for the Covid-19 expenditure and all the programmes that have been there, to roll-out so that to physically attend to Covid-19 needs, to account to parliament. So it needs to account with business to get the members of the executive to account.”

Below are Alert Level one lockdown restrictions:

DA calls for Parliament to fully resume business

President Ramaphosa announcing move to Lockdown Level one: