Mahama gov't stole GHC1bn through GYEEDA – Agyarko

Ghanaians gave President John Mahama a job to do but he has failed the people “miserably” with his “incompetence”, Mr Boakye Agyarko, Policy Advisor to the presidential nominee of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has expressed.

According to him, as Ghanaians approach the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections, they (Ghanaians) can no longer renew the mandate of Mr Mahama given his failure in office.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Monday 19 September, Mr Agyarko said: “The NPP’s National Youth Employment Programme, which became GYEEDA under President Mills, was launched on October 3, 2006.

The pilot project which ushered us in had by its time employed 33,000 youth in community education and agriculture. By the time the NPP left office on January 7, 2009, 110,000 young people were employed under the scheme. In under two years, with the right policies in place, positive change was made.”

“Now compare to what the NDC has done with youth employment or unemployment. Immediately the NDC took office, they created a hoard of unemployed youth by laying off all these 110,000 young people previously employed. In these 8 years, the NDC has been unable to recruit even 100,000 youth with their performance hovering around 70,000. What the NPP achieved under two years, the NDC has been unable to achieve in eight years."

“It is not surprising that their greatest achievement in this sector has been the creation of ingenuous schemes to facilitate the stealing of over GHS1 billion from the sector and sharing this loot amount among themselves and their cronies.

“With John Mahama’s track record, the NPP cannot fathom how the unemployment situation will improve under a future Mahama-led government. It is this outright theft from the public purse, fiscal indiscipline, reckless expenditure, and mismanagement of our finances that has presented President Mahama with the unenviable record of being the only leader in Ghana’s history to superintend three back-to-back double-digit fiscal deficits …Ghanaians elected him to do a job, he has failed miserably.”