Former President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama has challenged the current administration to a debate on investment in the various sectors of Ghana’s economy.
His challenge is on the back of the Vice President’s call on the NDC to name one social intervention the NDC has introduced since the party was in power for eight years from 2009 to 2016 at NPP Annual National Delegates Conference in Accra.
But speaking on the issue for the first time, the former President who doubles at the flag-bearer of the National Democratic Congress in the impending election said the debates should be on investments in real sectors and not social interventions.
“You must assure the people of jobs; if people are working and getting money what would they need free for if they can afford to pay. And somebody says, let’s have a competition on social intervention; social interventions are consumption. They should say let’s have a competition in who invested more in the real sectors than the other. We were doing 4.7 percent of GDP investment in the real sector, today they can hardly achieve 3 percent,” Mr. Mahama said during a meeting with the Association of Road Contractors.
To him, government’s failure to pay contractors is just as a result of the government’s believe that anyone who worked under him was politically afilliated.
“All the projects we did, all the roads and interchange; everything, the new Kumasi airport, Terminal 3 all those things we did with 54 billion Cedis. Today, in three and a half years, 140 billion Cedis has been spent and they say they can’t pay you two billion; it is deliberate, this government does not intend to pay you. And so, my brothers and sisters, it is obvious that the decision not to pay you is political; I cannot ascribe any reason to it because they have a mistaken believe that everybody who worked under John Mahama and NDC must be politically affiliated.”
Social intervention programs have become key in the current political landscape, with many wondering why the governing NPP which is perceived to be from a capitalist orientation, interested in the introduction of social intervention – National Health Insurance Scheme and Free SHS topmost- which is of a socialist characteristics of which the opposition NDC’s prides itself.
Source: MyNewsGh.com
