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President Nana Akufo-Addo is allegedly plotting to leave Dumsor for his successor, according to former president John Mahama.
Due to a $19 million debt owed to the West African Pipeline Company (WAPCo), Ghana is currently experiencing irregular power supplies. According to Deputy Energy Minister Andrew Egyapa Mercer, the government has already paid $13 million of the debt and is in negotiations with WAPCo to work out a payment schedule for the remaining $6 million.
During his “Building Ghana Tour”, Mr. Mahama made the following remarks in Sogakope, in the Volta Region:
“Today ‘dumsor’, they’re treating it like a football because he wants to kick it over the 7th January 2025 line and hand the trouble over to somebody else, and yet we resolved it before they came into office.”
Mr Mahama also condemned the government’s decision to tax electricity consumers.
“Today, they’ve put Value Added Tax on electricity bills. And COVID levy, NHIL levy, GETFUND Levy all on electricity bills, and so that’s going to send the cost of your electricity bill up. Already, there was a 29 per cent increase, there was a 19 per cent increase, then they tried to fool us with a 4% increase, and now it’s going up again astronomically”, Mr Mahama decried.
“It’s making Ghana a very difficult place to do business. All business people are complaining. The owner of this hotel who has given us this resort to do this thing, you should ask him how much he’s paying in utility bills. And yet, because of the mismanagement by the President and his cousin and his Vice President, it has plunged all of us into a difficult situation where they have pledged to the IMF [International Monetary Fund] to raise as much revenue as they ca,” the former president noted.
“And the point is, while you are raising revenue reduce your expenditure because that’s what any sane reasonable person does. Because if you reduce your expenditure, you can ease the burden that you’re putting on the taxpayer”, he highlighted.
“If they reduce the Office of the President’s expenditures, they have doubled them,” he declared. The budget increased by 82 billion cedis annually; therefore, if you could lower the budget’s rise in terms of expenditure, you could lower the tax incidence. The former president stated, “You might not need to impose Value Added Tax on electricity in order to pass the relief on to the people of Ghana.”
If Mr. Mahama wins the 2024 elections, he also pledged to finish any unfinished business that he might inherit from the current administration rather than initiating new ones, as the Akufo-Addo administration has been doing.
“All the projects that they inherited, they have abandoned, and they themselves have started projects that they know they cannot complete. And yet, instead of finishing the abandoned and ongoing projects, they have started news projects like agenda 111, some of them are at foundation level, some they’ve raised the block work, but they know that they cannot finish it before they leave”.
“So, what they will do is to push them on to somebody else and say that, we started this and you came and you’ve abandoned it. But look at the mess you’ve created, how are we going to get money to finish all those projects”, Mr Mahama wondered.
“But I pledge that we will restrain ourselves from starting new projects. Whatever little resources that we come and meet, we will spend it on completing the ongoing and abandoned projects.”
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
