THE NEW Patriotic Party (NPP) has fired back at President John Dramani Mahama for his statement on NPP’s free SHS education policy during his campaign tour of the Volta Region.

The NPP said if there was a party known for notoriously breaking campaign promises, it was the NDC.

It said the onetime NHIS premium, which was the NDC’s flagship in the 2008 elections, had become a mirage.

Rubbishing NPP’s free Senior High School (SHS) policy, President Mahama had told a crowd of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) supporters in the party’s stronghold that the NPP promised to build 300 schools in two years after hearing that the NDC planned to build 200 community schools.

Describing the NPP’s free SHS policy as incredible, President Mahama asked the opposition party’s communications director, Nana Akomea, to give him a break, saying the NPP had not ensured free basic/primary school, but was rather promising free SHS.

He said the NPP would soon be promising “free accommodation, free transport and even free air.”

However, the main opposition party asserted that neither NPP nor its communications director had promised 300 new SHS in two years.

“What the NPP has promised is to build 350 new community SHS, over four years, from 2013 to 2016. And this promise was not made after the NDC’s promise of building 200 SHS. This plan to build 350 new schools was announced by Professor Gyan-Baffuor, when he presented the NPP programme of free SHS on 29 August 2012,” the NPP stated in a statement issued yesterday by the party’s communications unit.

The statement reminded President Mahama that the NPP promise took place before the NDC launched its manifesto on October 4, 2012.

“So if there is any copying, it is the NDC which is trying to follow the NPP’s lead as far as the plan of building new SHS is concerned.

“It is also most ironic that President Mahama, who with his siblings, benefitted from free secondary education in the 1970s, is today able to tell Ghanaians that free secondary schooling for all our children is not possible, 40 years after he and his siblings have enjoyed free secondary education,” the statement noted.

It dismissed claims by the NDC that free SHS was not possible on account of costs, and also because the NPP had no good track record in fulfilling manifesto promises.

“On cost, the extra cost of free SHS per year would not be more than 1.4% of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product per year. The NDC government spent, in 2010, about 1.4% of our GDP to pay so called judgment debts.

“If a government of Ghana can spend 1.4% of GDP to pay judgment debts, then the same can be spent in providing free SHS for all our children,” the statement said.

Touching on fulfillment of manifestos, NPP pointed out that a list of broken promises in the 2008 NDC manifesto would fill several papers.

“One cannot help but recount one. NDC pledged to rid Accra of filth in their first 100 days. But four years after this pledge, what we have in the last 100 days of the NDC is cholera in Accra and other cities. The promises they made in the so-called Action Year of 2011 have become the subject of jokes across the country,” the statement reminded Ghanaians.

It told President Mahama the programme to deliver free SHS had been embraced by millions of suffering Ghanaian parents, “as a very direct way of spreading benefits of our oil economy. They would not be swayed by ill-motivated sentiments from any quarter.”