Manifesto is the reason for lack of continuity in development - Former NDPC Director of Policy

Former Director of Policy at the National Development Planning Commission(NDPC) Jerry Odotei, has stated that the lack of continuity in development in the country, especially the lack of centralized planning towards development is a result of the manifesto governance the country has embarked on since the inception of the 4th Republic.

He said this in a telephone interview with Johnnie Hughes on the Community Connect on 3FM, Friday, May 21.

Mr Odotei was speaking on the back of the crusade by the Greater Accra Minister Henry Quartey to decongest the city of Accra and make it work again, whether it is feasible or just a hoax.

He said “the issue is that we are all running a system that does not respect the established planning model that we as a country have wasted money to create over several years. The issue of centralized planning was established right from the time of Nkrumah, so there is a national framework that has been put together by a cross-section of Ghanaians. From the fisherman to the market woman, to the intellectual, I mean a cross-section of Ghanaians but our people just don’t want to look at it.

“We are using manifestoes to run this country, so there will not be continuity. The manifestoes wouldn’t help any country in the world. Every part of the world, national planning has been the process that has brought them up. We went to places like Singapore, Malaysia and other countries to bring the ideas, I mean India and all these countries have been here. The ideas have all been put together into a document that is lying at the National Development Planning Commission that the politicians don’t want to look at and respect.

“And that was made by Ghanaians, it wasn’t made by any individual, it was made by a group called the Cross-Sectoral Planning Group(CSPG) and these were made up of a cross-section of Ghanaians from various areas of expertise in the micro economy, the Bank of Ghana was there, everybody was there, like the CSOs, anybody who had competence in that area was there to contribute to it”.