Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije, AMA boss
A parliamentary aspirant, Jerry Ahmed Shaibu, says though Chief Executive of Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije, has done something for the people of Accra, that is not enough to earn him a parliamentary seat.
According to Mr Shaibu who is contesting the Ablekuma South constituency parliamentary seat on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party, Mr Vanderpuije “is not the best candidate for the people because he believes in his money and not the people”.
Mr Shaibu said while Mr Vanderpuije has brought some level of development in Accra, including ending the shift education system, the people are living in filth and plagued by cholera and malaria.
“If I say he is a total failure, it would be too harsh because he has done something, like the millennium schools, but if the people are living in filth, cholera and malaria will be rampant and they will fall sick”, Mr Shaibu told Onua FM Monday.
Mr Shaibu who is legal practitioner is contesting Mr Vanderpuije, a National Democratic Congress candidate for the Ablekuma South constituency parliamentary seat.
He said on Onua FM’s political talk show, Kokromoti : “I applaud him for eliminating the shift system” but the people “need to be helped not in monetary terms but how to make money for themselves”.
According to the legal practitioner, said the Mr Vanderpuije does not even know people who ought to be in school have abandoned their classrooms for fishing.
“Those he claims he sacked from Sodom and Gomorrah are still there. Go and look at the filth along the sea. People defecate along the coast and as a mayor, he does not see the need to keep the place clean yet we pay property rate and tolls,” Mr Shaibu said. He argued that, “as a mayor, you are the spending officer who supervise 13 constituencies yet we are not seeing anything [and] now you want to degrade yourself to one constituency, what can you do?”.
Change we can feel Mr Shaibu has thus urged the constituents to give him the mandate to lead them for a change that they can feel, saying, “I will not be a bitter change He said he has already instituted a Jerry Power Education Scheme to support graduates of senior high school continue their education to the tertiary level. “What we do is, we pay the tuition fees for those going to public institutions, which has been running for the past three years.
Every month, I register about 4,000 people onto the HNIS. These are people between the ages of 18-69 year” he said. He said if given the power, he hopes to turn the Mamprobi Girls School into a “Mamprobi Soccer Academy” to train footballers. He added: “we shall encourage beach soccer and all these people will play in a clean environment because we shall clear the beaches. They will clean the area.
Fisher folks who also fish rubbers due to the filth in the sea will also catch fish instead of rubber”. Mr Ahmed has also promised to establish Korle Gonno Technical Vocational Institute to train artisans and people in other vocation, and also build a musical studio to train musicians.
