Obed Takes a Swipe At Kufuor, NPP Over NDC Legacy of Debts

Dr. Obed Asamoah has taken a swipe at President J. A. Kufuor and the NPP over the so-called debt incurred by the NDC while Government.

He said he was not surprised at the way President Kufuor is touting the debt issue because he believes that he was not in touch with parliament when he was in the opposition. Dr. Asamoah was addressing a meeting of NDC members in Tamale. He said he could not understand Kufuor's predicament because the debt situation of the country had been repeated over and over when the NDC was in power.

Every budget statement contained the debt situation. Dr. Asamoah added that as late as October last year, a Minister was in parliament to give a detail account of the debt sitaution, which stood at $5.5 billion. He said the NDC always quoted the debt in dollars.

"Some how, Kufuor and his colleagues discovered the word 'trillion' for the first time and decided to turn the dollar into trillion and make it look like a surprising thing. Yet the figures had been there all the time, only we expressed them in dollars".

Dr. Asamoah went on: "Kufuor is talking about trillion, trillion as if we chopped the money by ourselves. There is no way we could have chopped that money. Most of it were project loans. So the money did not even come to Ghana". He said the money was administered by the donors and they sometimes decided on contractors who should work on the projects.

Usually the contractors and suppliers come from the home countries of hte donors and they are paid directly. "We didn't even see the money," he emphasized.

"In any case, every country owes money. Even the USA has domestic debts of $5 trillion. Every country borrows money for development. We borrow externally because we don't have. Some of our neighbours even owe more than we do".

He said the NPP is bent on vilifying and assassinating the character of the NDC leadership to score cheap political points because they (NPP) cannot perform.

That there are NPP Ministers in the present Government who took away cars for about ?4 million when they were in public office. Yet they are mute on it.

Dr. Asamoah added: "Ex-gratia for Ministers is a constitutional requirement. People like H. H. Mensah and Nana Akuffo Addo and the rest took ?20 million each is ex-gratia, but they did not talk about it. They talked about NDC Ministers to make them look like thieves".

He said the NPP claimed that if they came to power they would abolish school fees, cash and carry and double workers' wages. "Now they are saying they haven't had enough time. How much time do they need to abolish cash and carry. They can take thirty seconds to do it".

He continued: "They say there is no money in the kitty. So they think there s some box full of money sitting somewhere so that when you come, you just dip your hand into it." He added that the crux of the matters is that the NPP is not capable of implementing anything of the sort because by the policy of HIPC, the Government cannot subsidize anything.

It has therefore disabled itself from abolishing school fees, cash and carry and the rest. Dr. Asamoah said what the people of this country are going to experience is high prices and more taxes.

"Now you have increase in the price of petrol, increase in water and electricity tariffs. This is just the beginning. They will rise more than that as the NPP will have to adopt a policy of cost recovery because of the HIPC they have chosen."

He believes that there is no way the NPP can relieve the people of this country of their hardships and added: "We told the people of this country that the NPP people were talking through their heads. They will make life more difficult. They say Aseye Ho, right. When you are buried, it will also be Aseye Ho".