John Tia Akologu, the Minister for Information, yesterday said that anybody who could not ‘feel money in his/her pocket’ or experience the ruling National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) ‘Better Ghana Agenda’ was “either sleeping or pretending to be sleeping”.
“A lot has been done by the Mills-led administration and it is only those who are pretending to be sleeping who are not seeing it. They are refusing to see.”
Taking his turn at the Meet-The-Press Series, Mr. Tia, flanked by his two deputies- Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and Baba Jamal- outlined what can be described as a lopsided achievement of the NDC government, deferring the details until “the first quarter of next year”.
The Minister said the action year promised by President John Evans Atta Mills had been fulfilled in spite of claims by some Ghanaians, particularly the opposition, that nothing meaningful was done.
“This year was indeed an action-packed year. It is obvious many historical strides have been made in 2011,” he said, adding that President Mills had kept his promise and everybody knew that there had been significant improvement in the scheme of affairs.
“The Ghanaian worker seems to be feeling the action year in their pockets,” he said, but his comment generated murmurings from journalists in the conference room.
He said, “Nurses are now jubilating because they have been migrated onto the single spine. Money is in people’s pockets but those who are pretending are refusing to acknowledge this fact.”
Mr. Tia could not outline the country’s debts stock except to say that the about 38 percent rate was normal since the country was nowhere near the 60 percent that would run down the economy.
He justified the high school fees being charged currently by rather shifting the blame on the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) who, he said, “fix school fees in consultation with the Ghana Education Service”.
On the dying textile industry, the Minister said the government was putting interventions in the cotton sector to make it thrive and also insisted that the government was supporting the poultry industry to stand on its feet despite agitation from poultry farmers that they had been neglected by the government.
He said the government had been able to stabilize the economy, bringing inflation to single digit and reducing interest rates to 9.1 percent.
Mr. Tia said the IMF had given the green light for the government to access the $3 billion CBN Chinese loan to facilitate the bridging of the infrastructural gap while all four convergent criteria of the West Africa Monetary Zone (WAMZ) had been met for the first time.
He stated that 97 percent of public and civil servants had been migrated onto the Single Spine salary Structure (SSSS) and this had increased the government’s wage bill from GH¢1million to GH¢4million.
He said the NDC government had been able to remove about 1,200 schools under trees and executed other social intervention programmes, adding that the extension of the 3-year SSS was “ill advised”.
He noted, “The action year is abundantly on display in the agricultural and other sectors”, adding that the government should be commended for the way it was handling the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) instead of condemning them.
Okudzeto Ablakwa, who preferred to talk about the corruption perception index, said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) could not match the NDC in the area of fighting the menace of corruption.
“The 4.1 score is the highest ever. In the time of the NPP, their highest score was 3.9 and it is clear we only slipped to their best performance.”
Before questions and answers, Baba Jamal warned journalists not to focus on what his boss had presented and not introduce any ‘extraneous’ issues into the programme.
