Member of Parliament for Mpohor, Alex Kofi Agyekum
The Member of Parliament for Mpohor, Alex Kofi Agyekum, has bemoaned the inability of the NPP government to offer jobs to its supporters and how it is affecting party work at the grassroots due to the inaction of constituency executives.
Hon. Agyekum said he has tried on many occasions to help people in his constituency to be employed but "anytime you go, they are asking for certificates which many of the people do not have, and that if elections were held to today, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo could lose".
The MP was speaking to NPP executives in Adum-Banso on November 11, 2018, during which he admonished the rank and file of the party to improve on mobilizing and energizing the base of the party for the 2020 elections.
He said, "many of you have come for positions in the party only to relax after your election, but it is important to work hard in the interest of the constituency and the party we all serve because that is the surest way of energizing the people to support development efforts and party activities".
Stephen Smith-Mensah, a staunch member of the NPP, told journalists that much as he agrees with the Mpohor MP, the constituency executives lack logistics and other support to enable them to work hard for the party, and pointed out that there is apathy in the district so far as NPP activities are concerned.
He said the MP and the Mpohor district chief executive are also part of the problem with many divisions in the ranks of the constituency executives, which he said, have also affected development and attractiveness of the NPP in the Mpohor district.
Smith-Mensah advised that the MP for Mpohor should also do more on his part, instead of his concentration on a third-term bid to contest the 2020 primaries, which is against an unwritten convention in the district that every Mp should serve for two-terms, and pave the way for others.
"The MP's claim that he has to be in parliament for the third time to become a minister of state is not true. Ministers are appointed through the president's discretion".
He said intelligence that has been picked in the Mpohor constituency indicates that "our people are angry, except few hypocrites who do not want to accept that the Mp has failed the people and that he only uses the MP's common fund to help some people in the constituency".
Smith-Mensah said NPP will have to work harder because the NDC is becoming stronger in the Mpohor constituency due to NPP's internal wranglings, disaffection, the MP's attitude and how he has been able to acquire four houses in different parts of Ghana just in the middle of his second term as a legislator".
