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The COVID-19 pandemic “may have been a national health disaster for Ghana,” according to the National Democratic Congress (NDC), “but it was a bonanza and an opportunity for officials of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government and the New Patriotic Party to engage in the most obscene plundering of state resources never seen before in Ghana’s history.”
On Wednesday, February 1, 2023, the NDC’s National Communications Officer, Mr. Sammy Gyamfi, addressed the media during a press conference about the Auditor- General’s findings on the Covid funds.
“You may recall that at the height of the pandemic in 2020, an audio recording of one Madam Felicia Tetteh, a former Municipal Chief Executive and parliamentary candidate of the NPP in the Sagnarigu Constituency in the Northern Region, emerged with grim details about how she, as a parliamentary candidate, was given GHS100,000 of COVID-19 funds while another GHS200,000 was given to her Constituency Chairman”.
“By simple extrapolation and arithmetic, about GHS82,500,000 of COVID-19 funds were doled out to New Patriotic Party parliamentary candidates and constituency chairmen in all 275 constituencies across the country. How could the New Patriotic Party and the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government be so wicked and heartless? Clearly, these are a group of people who have no love for country and have never been interested in protecting the citizenry but only came to power to steal, kill and destroy the country”, Sammy Gyamfi stated in his Moments of Truth press briefing.
“It is worthy of note, that these stinking revelations have come at a time of excruciating hardships for Ghanaians occasioned by high tax payments, hyperinflation of 54.1% and an ever-increasing rate of unemployment. As we speak, government has announced a total freeze on public sector employment while our secondary schools are battling with hunger due to shortage of food supplies from the Government. Our children don’t even have access to basic curricular-based text books almost four years after the introduction of a new curricular”, Mr Gyamfi said.
Samy Gyamfi added that “we are all witnesses to how government has sought to justify its mismanagement of the Ghanaian economy by citing COVID-19 as the cause of our economic woes. Indeed, COVID-19 is the most favourite line in the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia book of lamentations for the unprecedented havoc they have caused to the Ghanaian economy. At the very least opportunity, spokespersons of this government consciously and shamelessly recite this excuse as the cause of the economic mess we presently have on our hands”.
“What the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration’s defenders have neglected to tell the Ghanaian people is that COVID-19 resulted in the largest cash bonanza ever received by a sitting government in Ghanaian history.
And that if these resources had been used wisely and intelligently by our duty-bearers, our precious nation would not have been thrust into the economic mess we currently find ourselves in, he claimed.
“Sadly”, Mr Gyamfi noted, “after squandering all these resources on some very unconscionable ventures under the guise of fighting COVID-19, these callous nation-wreckers in government have turned around to not only blame the pandemic which fattened their pockets, but are now seeking to expropriate the life savings and hard-earned monies of the Ghanaian people, in the name of Domestic Debt Exchange”.
“We, in the NDC, have always maintained that the manner in which COVID-19 funds were expended by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government spelt doom for our economy. It is a fact beyond dispute that Ghana is now bankrupt and our economy has finally collapsed under the watch of President Akufo-Addo and his Vice, Alhaji Bawumia. Having run down our economy through reckless and inordinate borrowing, stealing, and outright abuse of public funds, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government, in a desperate move to clinch an IMF deal, which appears to be their last gasp for breath, has resorted to a Domestic Debt Exchange programme which seeks to expropriate the live savings and hard earned monies of government creditors including Ghanaian citizens”.
“In the face of this unpardonable and despicable raid on the public purse, there can be no justification whatsoever for the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government to attempt to indirectly impose a draconian debt exchange programme on the Ghanaian people in order to clean a mess they and their cronies in government have created. It is, therefore, within the right of labour, trade unions, pensioners, individual bondholders, banks and other stakeholders to stand firmly against the brazen attempt to foist and impose unfavourable terms of a so-called domestic debt exchange programme on them”.
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
