Ex-president John Dramani Mahama has taken a swipe at the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) over its inability to deliver on a campaign promise to give each constituency $1 million per year.
The ‘One Constituency-One million dollars’ was one of the NPP’s major campaign promises going into the 2016 general elections.
However, almost two years after winning power, the NPP government has been unable to make this promise a reality.
Mahama believes government’s announcement that the promised annual $1 million expires at the end of each year if not made available is very flawed.
The NDC flagbearer aspirant went on to mock the ruling party, insisting he is yet to see money with an expiry date.
“…The worse one[promise] is the $1 million, per constituency, per year. Now we are almost two years gone, so $2 million. But we’ve now been told that the money [for 2017 has] expired. Ask Agalga, they called the Minister [of Special initiatives, Hawa Koomson] to Parliament and asked her about last year’s money and she said that one has expired. I know rice, cooking oil, corned beef, sardine, they have expiry date, but I’ve never seen money with expiry date,” Mahama said, while addressing delegates in the Upper East Region.
“If we use her logic about 2017 one, then it means that 2018 one, today is October 12, it means that the expiry date for the 2018 one is 31st December 2018. It means that one is also expiring,” he mocked.
This comes after Mahama earlier questioned the government’s ability to deliver on its much-touted One-village-One dam promise.
Speaking to some NDC delegates during his campaign tour of the Upper West region, the former president said there are no signs of the government’s one village, one dam initiative on the ground after almost 22 months in office.
According to him, the government was rather providing dugouts and lying to people that it was building dams.
Meanwhile, the Minster for Special Initiatives, Hawa Koomson, believes Mahama is wrong to say the dams being constructed by government are not up to the desired standard.
She explained that the dams are “2.5 below and 2.5 up above ground level. The length of the embankment range 150 to 250 meters and all these depend on the topography of the location, and water capacity holding is about 30,000 cubic meters.”
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