Post-launch of the NPP’s manifesto reading which took place at Cape Coast last Saturday, there have been concerns raised about why the manifesto seems to focus only on seventeen sectors but out of these seventeen sectors, 125 Ministers have been appointed.
Member of Parliament for the Adentan constituency and Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party, Lawyer Yaw Buaben Asamoa, has disputed the assertion that the NPP’s manifesto is a seventeen-sector manifesto.
In an interview with Happy98.9FM’s Kwame Afrifa Mensah on Ghana’s number one political show ‘Epahoa Daben’, Lawyer Yaw Buaben stated that the sectors that appear in the manifesto are not that of which they are targeting, but of which they have worked on.
He continued, “It is those of us, the Ministers, who sat down to write this manifesto that decided that if we categorize into these seventeen sectors, it will make our reporting simple. That is our structure. It is not the government’s structure and it is not following the government’s structure”.
According to the Member of Parliament, it is only a book-style that those who wrote the manifesto deemed fit to employ to better account for the work that they have done for the development of the nation, hence it does not reflect the government’s structure.
However, responding to popular commentary on the number of ministers appointed by the Akufo-Addo led administration, the astute politician indicated that the number has been justified by their numerous accomplishments.
He was quick to note that the erstwhile Mahama administration complaining about the number of ministers and claiming that it had caused a duplication of roles could not even achieve a fraction of what they (NPP) had achieved.
“When you come to Ministers, it is a cost-benefit analysis. If we have 125 Ministers and our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is higher than when we had a hundred Ministers, then what wrong have we done?”, Lawyer Buabeng quizzed.
By: Maureen Dedei Quaye