The Ghana AIDS Commission has fought back suggestions that the institution is against the passage of the much talked about Anti-LGBTQ bill recently laid in Parliament.
The Commission posits that it only wanted the legislative body to take a second look at certain clauses in the bill that were not specific to address related issues about the phenomenon and not totally averse to the passage of the bill into law.
The Commission further indicated that the areas it raised concerns with have the tendency to create problems for the general public.
Speaking in a media engagement, the Director General of the Commission, Dr Kyeremeh Atuahene indicated that the officials of the Commission will be engaging the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs in the coming days to clear the distorted impression.
” I would like to point out strongly that at no point in time, has the AIDS Commission been out rightly against the passage of the Anti-LGBTQ bill but rather , we identified certain clauses of the bill that had the risk of creating difficult circumstances for families, individuals and communities in general , and humbly requested that the legislative body take a second look at the clauses as part of the entire process”.
Dr Atuahene further revealed that as part of the memoranda collected from all stakeholders as part of the process to finetune the law, certain groups and Civil society organizations had raised same issues as the Commission and which the Attorney General agreed to when reviewing the bill as part of the administrative process before the bill was laid before Parliament.
” A good number of stakeholders and Civil society organizations raised reservations about the clauses we spoke about which had some major decisions to be taken and to which the principal legal advisor to government largely agreed with and made certain recommendations to Parliament to consider in drafting the final bill .
” I am very happy that the input of my institution has been incorporated into the bill to reflect the public health perspectives the Commission has been advocating for all this while and our appearance before the Committee responsible for the bill vindicated our position that we are not against the passage of the bill”.
In September, 2021, the Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission revealed that the outfit had some challenges with certain portions of the Anti-LGBTQ bill which he believed will militate against certain aspects of the Commission’s functions in limiting the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.
