2020 Budget: Make NADMO Act Operational–Helen Ntoso

A Member on Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament, Hon Helen Adjoa Ntoso, has called on government to activate the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) ACT, Act 927, 2016 to support flood victims in the country.

According to her, the operationalization of the Act 927, would adequately resource NADMO to prevent and mitigate disaster.

She added that the key intervention in the NADMO Act was the establishment of the National Disaster Management Fund (NDMF), which was aimed at resourcing NADMO to deal with disasters in the country.

Hon Helen Ntoso made this when she took her turn on the debate of the 2020 Budget presented to parliament by the Minister for Finance.

She argued that the creation of the disaster fund was to ensure the availability of contingency funds to bring relief to disaster victims wherever disaster strikes.

Hon Helen Ntoso who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Krachi West, highlights the devastating impact of the recent floods in the Upper East, Oti, Upper West regions and other parts of the country.

She charged the government to provide funds to NADMO to make the Act operational as the nation faces more unforeseen disasters.

The former Volta Regional Minister also expressed concern about the government lackadaisical attitude towards the completion of the 500 bed capacity of the Military Hospital at Afari in the Ashanti Region.

Hon. Ntoso said, it took the wisdom of former President John Mahama to put up the 500-bed capacity hospital and questioned the Akufo Addo government commitment to completing the project as several promises have failed since 2017.

In her view, the project when completed would provide immediate healthcare services to Ghanaians as well as citizens from neighbouring countries.

She blasted the Akufo Addo government for deliberately delaying the completion of the 500-bed capacity military hospital project and other similar ones for political capitalisation.

She also took a swipe on the government for failing to make the National Security Ministry budget policies direction known to parliament as the Ministry is not above parliamentary scrutiny.

The Krachi West lawmaker said, the National Security Ministry in its previous budgets estimates promised to embark on some development and training institutions projects in Koforidua, and other places but nothing has been done.

She added that parliament could not be approving budgets for the Ministry without clear knowledge of the Ministry policy direction.

Hon Helen Ntoso described the 2020 budget, as a complete recycled of previous budgets and that all projects budgeted for 2017,2018 and 2019 are been repeated.

She said as it stands there was no hope those projects would come to fruition in 2020.

She said the Akufo Addo government is a complete failure and a waste of resources.

Source: therepublicnewsonline.com/Felix Nyaaba