OccupyGhana chides gov’t appointees

OCCUPY GHANA, a political but non-partisan movement concerned about the leadership in the country has expressed their disgust at the indiscriminate acts of corruption being perpetrated by government appointees.

The movement further expressed their dissatisfaction about government's unwillingness to provide answers to the needs of Ghanaians.

They raised these concerns in a press statement released yesterday marking their 100 days after their Occupyflagstaffhouse protest.

“OccupyGhana is today (Wednesday) serving notice to government and informing all Ghanaians that we have drawn up, and together with other concerned Ghanaians and civil society organizations, will within the next 100 days declare a number of Red Days as we embark on a series of activities to demand accountability and good governance,” they stated.

According to them, thousands of Ghanaians were suffering from the cholera disease while some politically well-connected officials were looting government coffers and supervising scams worth many millions of dollars, citing the issues of GYEEDA, SUBAH and SADA as clear examples.

The group further raised concerns about the corrupt act of officials of some state institutions and called on the Attorney-General, as well as the Auditor General to help stop the acts and also retrieve back some monies paid illegally to some officials.

“The National Identification Authority (NIA) has abandoned an otherwise good registration exercise and left millions of good ID cards to rot whilst it seeks to saddle Ghanaians with an additional $115m to do the same thing it has failed to do in almost a decade,” they pointed out.

They observed that some greedy officials from the NIA were pursuing the expansion of a nebulous and scamming contract to re-register only 15 million Ghanaians at a cost of $300 million instead of pursuing the World Bank money which they believed was enough to undertake the exercise.

They were also disgruntled about how parliamentarians voted on the $800 million loan put before the house even though they had not read the voluminous agreement attached to it.

“Worse yet, the government through its Parliamentary majority has passed many important roads and natural resources-related contracts within hours of their being laid in recently recalled parliament under a certificate of emergency,” they noted.

These acts they observed were the reason why government had gone beggar-bowl in hand to the International Monetary Fund for a financial bailout and policy credibility endorsement and were of the view that those policies would hurt the average Ghanaian.

They further called on the Bank of Ghana to tread cautiously with the management of the Cedi in its quest to hold the dollar down, stating that “allowing the cedi to find its true worth is better for government’s wage bill management. Holding down is leading to losses for exporters who had adjusted wages to accommodate the earlier decline in the cedi.”

The group later vowed to bring the culture of incompetence and impunity to an end and called on all well-meaning Ghanaians to support OccupyGhana in their quest to bring growth and development to the country.