Former President John Rawlings has said that there is too much hardship in Ghana.

In his view, although infrastructure has improved in the country, the economic difficulty is having a heavy toll on the citizenry.

Speaking on the Morning Starr on the occasion of his 69th birthday, the former military leader told host Nii Arday Clegg that he knows the living condition of Ghanaians because he continues to offer financial assistance to several suffering Ghanaians on daily basis.

“There is an improvement on the infrastructure, apart from the energy and the water; but that has also improved. There is hardship, it’s very tough on people and I know this because I am always looking for money to help people out with school fees, medicals, funerals and all kind of situations. Things are generally tough for majority of people,” he said.

Mr. Rawlings, who founded the ruling National Democratic Congress, led the party into victory in the 1992 and 96 elections after ruling Ghana for many years through a coup d’etat.

Rawlings and his party won with 58.3 percent of the vote in 1992, with outside observers declaring the voting to be "free and fair".

After two terms in office, barred by the Ghanaian constitution from standing in any election, he endorsed his vice-president John Atta Mills, now deceased, as presidential candidate in 2000. Mills contested but lost the 2000 elections to the NPP's John Agyekum Kufuor but bounced back to win the 2008 elections beating Nana Akufo-Addo of the NPP.