Story by: Yunus Swalahudeen Wakpenjo
Source: Millennium news online
Ranking member on the parliamentary select committee on foreign affairs, former deputy minister of education in charge of tertiary, Member of Parliament for north tongu, honorable Okudzeto Ablakwa, has accused government of Ghana for failing to account for 12.7 million dollar special allocation meant for quarantine, from the monies received from World Bank to help sustain fight against covid 19.
Responding to topics on inside politics on power 97.9, Ablakwa says, Ghana has amassed wealth from various coffers, locally and foreign, yet the government has failed to give a meaningful welfare to its citizens.
“we have gotten 100 million from world bank, 200 million from stabilization fund and 67 billion cedi from coivd 19 emergency fund, yet, the government has not been able to evacuate its stranded citizens in another countries. No one has told us the money is finished. So where is the money?” he asked.
Several Ghanaian are stranded abroad, waiting to be evacuated, but government is claiming there is no budget allocation for such distress call. Ghanaian who wish to be evacuated, would have to pay for their flight and cost for hotel to be quarantined for 14 days. Meanwhile, Ghanaian stranded abroad, have expressed their inability to foot bills for quarantine when they are evacuated.
Ablakwa frowns at citizens required to pay for their evacuation and lamented over high cost of selected hotels for their quarantined by government of Ghana.
“Our checks with various hotels, shows their bills are exorbitant. African regent charges 650 cedi per night, kinpiski charges 550 for 14 days, where will they get monies to pay for these bills? and why these only two selected hotels?” He argued.
“Government is such insensitive with plights of Ghanaian in this humanitarian crisis. When everyone is trying to save his citizens, our government is thinking of profit sharing” he added.
“I am thinking of filing an emergency question for the government to appear before the parliament to tell us the criteria they arrived at in choosing these two hotels for quarantine” he intimated.
He recounted how previous administration of NDC during the era of late mills, responded to distress call to evacuate their citizens from Libya, during the first uprising which saw the over throwing and subsequently killing of president Mu’ammar Gaddafi.
“When the Libya uprising first broke, we intervene and evacuated more than 1000 of our stranded Ghanaian free of charge. No one was asked to pay anything” he recounted.
Ablakwa also disclosed that, during the initial move to lock down borders, he wrote a memorandum for government to consider going into an agreement with countries who intend evacuating their citizens, to bring back Ghanaian based in their respective countries, but the government was adamant to such call.
“I personally wrote a memorandum to the government to go into an agreement with countries who were asking for their citizens to be evacuated, instead of returning the flight empty, it should equally bring back our Ghanaian citizens who intend to be evacuated, But they ignored me.” He lamented.
The honorable member added, the same way, when they asked government to evacuate Ghanaian students in wuhan, when the pandemic first broke, the government maligned them and used a fake news to insight Ghanaian against them, making them look like the devils. He said, many fake stories were written against them to make them feel they are making effort to plunge the country into distress of possible spread of the pandemic, just because they said, their fellow Ghanaian should be evacuated for safety.
“The same attitude they shown when minority asked them to bring Ghanaian students from Wuhan, they told so many lie about us, and claim when they evacuate them, they will come and spread the disease. Now they did not come, but we have allowed foreigners to come and inflict us with the disease” he argued.