NPP is doing target politics - Minister

The Deputy Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Dr. Omane Boamah has said the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is deliberately failing to identify the good things presented by the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in the 2012 budget presented to parliament a week ago.

According to him, the ruling NDC government is delivering on its campaign promises and by the end of 2012, “the good people of Ghana will be the best to judge. The NPP is only doing target politics and intentionally failing to see the good things being executed by the government”.

He quoted the Finance Minister, Dr. Kwabena Duffour who stated in his concluding statement of the 2012 budget that, “we promised to arrest inflation, yes we have! We promised to arrest the rapid depreciation of the Cedi, yes we have! We promised to provide free school uniforms and exercise books, yes we have! We promised to deliver skills training and jobs to our youth, yes we have! We promised to expand the school feeding programme, yes we have! We promised to provide school computers and Maths and Science scholarships, yes we have...” Speaking on “Good Morning Ghana” programme on Metro TV, the Deputy Minister said for the first time in the country’s history, cocoa production has reached a record high of 1million metric tonnes stating that “COCOBOD has initiated a programme to supply free cocoa seedlings to cocoa farmers. Beginning 2012, Government will through COCOBOD supply 20,000,000 seedlings free to cocoa farmers for the next six years”.

He said the 2012 budget with the theme, ?Infrastructure Development for Accelerated Growth and Job Creation” shows that the future of Ghana is bright adding “government will create jobs for the unemployed youth”.

Another panel member, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto who is NPP MP for Kwadaso was worried that many young men and women come out of the country’s universities and other tertiary institutions and cannot get jobs to do. This he said poses security threat to Ghana’s future.

He said government should concentrate on designing a policy to create jobs for such people instead of the propaganda they were going about doing. He said the 2012 budget is only repeated promises being recycled adding “the NDC’s ‘Better Ghana is passing the youth by”.

“The NDC has failed Ghanaians in the past three years in office and I don’t think they can do anything positive with the one year left. What they do is to pose a 1,000 question and answer them”, he added.