The Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, has described as baseless, opposition to the building a new chamber for Parliament.

He said that the country has more pressing issues and priorities to fulfill but all cannot be done before building the new chamber.

According to him, the argument that the new chamber is not of priority is baseless.

In a rare appearance on GHOne TV’s GH Today, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu defended the need for the new chamber.

“As a country, we are not out of the woods yet in spite of the quality…quantity of various shades of improvement that we are adding to the lives and living standards of our people. We are not there yet.

We are not out of the woods, but tell me, we do know that the basic needs of a human being to start with is food, clothing and shelter. Whenever have we been able to achieve this before we started building our stadia or our national theatre? Food, clothing and shelter, have we been able [provide it completely]?,” he said.

He added that there is a housing deficit close to two million and yet they were building roads.

“There’s a housing deficit close to two million and yet we are building roads. Between roads and housing, the priority should be on housing. We build roads, we build schools, and we build health facilities. They are all to inure to the quality of life—the standard of living of our people," he said.

He added that even America has its own problems as a country.

"Even the United States of America; can we say that every citizen of the United States of America has three square meals? And yet they have all these things that we so much enjoy.

Let nobody tell me that not until maybe we are able to provide clothing for everybody, not until we are able to provide adequate housing to everybody these other things are luxuries,” he noted.