Vice President Mahamadu Bawumia, flag-bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the December general elections has called out former President John Mahama and described his records in government as nothing worth writing home about.
“The former President has a penchant for describing me as a failure. I get surprised when he does that because Ghanaians do not have short memories and remember his records when he was President. We remember how under him we endured ‘dumsor’ for four years with all the distraction and the negative effects on industry and on livelihoods and how many dies in hospitals because there was no light under his government yet he turns round to say the NPP has failed.
“Ghanaians have not forgotten how the National Health Insurance was almost collapsed under him and we were basically back to the days of the ‘cash and carry’ system. We remember how the National Ambulance Service had only 37 ambulances for the whole country and how the NPP government has brought One Constituency, One Ambulance yet he says the NPP has failed and this really surprises me”, Dr. Bawumia noted in response to a question during an interaction he had with journalists selected from all the 16 regions at an event in Accra on Sunday.
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The Vice President explained that Sunday’s interaction with journalists was originally planned for June but had to be postponed until after the selection of a running mate for the NPP and the launch of the Party’s manifesto.
He basically answered questions from the journalist for almost three hours and touched on all sectors of the economy.
Explaining why he is a better choice to lead the country, Dr. Bawumia said even as a Vice President, he has come up with and implemented 33 policy initiatives and dared former President Mahama to mention a single policy initiative he came up with as President.
Dr. Bawumia drew a contrast between Ghana under former president John Mahama and Ghana under the NPP government and said the country deserves an upgrade, not a reset.
The Vice President said he represents the future Ghana needs and asked that he should be given a fair hearing as President to prove his worth and that even as Vice President, he has an impressive record to show.
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Dr. Bawumia further recounted the state of Ghana under John Mahama:
“Under the former Government, agricultural growth had declined to 2.9%, of course the industry growth had collapsed because of Dumsor. Unemployment was high, there was a freeze on public recruitment as a result, and the banking sector was on the verge of collapse.
“We had, as a result, the cancellation of the teachers training allowances, cancellation of nursing training allowances, we had the three months paying polices for teachers where for three years weren’t paid, and again many children could not attend Senior High School because of difficulties of paying fees and so on.
“We had many challenges that he left us with. So when you juxtapose that record with what we have been able to do, in this our eight years in office, we have created at least 2.1 million jobs, the latest number I saw was 2.3 million but I say at least 2.1million in the last seven years and this is a hard data I am talking about.
“We’ve kept the public sectors workers employed and fully paid, through the COVID pandemic, we didn’t lay anybody off and we have built more roads three times more the length of roads than what he did in office, we built more railway than any other government in the Fourth Republic.
“We have expanded rural telephone, we have 78 sites for rural telephone when we came in today we have 1008 sites for rural telephone, we built more public libraries than any other government. In his time, he built only 3 public libraries in 8 years and we built 54 public libraries in 8 years.
“We constructed about 12 major fish landing sites across the country, we constructed two fishing harbors in Elimina and James Town , constructed more sanitation facilities 817 than any other government in the Fourth Republic . This has increased the population access to toilet facilities from 33% in 2016 to 80% and 5400 communities have been declared open defecation free.
“We have built more sports facilities in Ghana than any other government in the Fourth Republic. When we came into office there were only three Astroturf, today we have over 150.
“We have restored teachers and nursing training allowance, increased the beneficiaries of scholarships behind 70%. The National Health Insurance is now extended to cover sickle cell patients. We have extended the National Health Insurance to cover childhood cancer, extended the National Health Insurance to cover kidney dialysis for over 60s and then under 18s.
“We saved the bank deposits of 4.6 million. We would have lost those deposits if the banks had not been saved. I don’t understand whether the former President had not taken his time to actually understand what happened in the banking sector; the banks depositor were going to lose their deposits if those banks were not saved. Atrocious things happened. This is why those banks had to be saved, they were not collapsed, there were emerged into other banks. And no banking depositor lost one cedis. Everybody maintained. Some other the banks broke all the rules.”
