Deputy Minority Leader, Dominic Nitiwul
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has a better record in terms of policy interventions at tackling the socio-economic challenges that confront Ghanaians, Deputy Minority Leader Dominic Nitiwul has said.
According to him, when the NPP was in power from 2001 to 2009, the John Agyekum Kufour-led government introduced policies including the National Youth Employment Programme, now known as the Youth Employment Agency, the National Health Insurance Scheme, the National School Feeding Programme and the Metro Mass Transit system that provided jobs for millions of Ghanaians.
Speaking on State of Affairs on GHOne television Monday June 6, Mr Nitiwul, who is also the Member of Parliament for Bimbilla, said: “At least, we had the Youth Employment Programme [which] you [NDC] have spoilt, and we will resuscitate it when we come back; National Health Insurance Scheme that employed thousands of people, Metro Mass that employed thousands of people, School Feeding.”
He added: “We created a good atmosphere; we changed the economy of Ghana from HIPC [Highly Indebted Poor Country] to [a] middle income [country] within eight years. That has made thousands of people get good jobs.”
He said these were development programmes instituted by the then NPP government that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) executives had failed to appreciate.
“Maybe you [NDC officials] don’t understand what it means by creating jobs. If you understand, you will understand that an economy that was HIPC, that could not pay its debt, [a country whose] debt was three times their income in a year and, then, within eight years that economy becomes middle income that can stand on its own and you think they [NPP] didn’t do anything," he said
Meanwhile, the National Organiser of the NDC, Kofi Adams, also commenting on the same programme, said the NPP made several promises in their manifesto in terms of job creation but those promises were not fulfilled.
