My fellow Ghanaians, the responsibilities of every President of a Country, are many and among them is to defend the sovereignty of his or her Country at all times. In times of war, and in times of crises of any kind, such as the COVID-19 Pandemic. The COVID-19 epidemic has become a nightmare of the World. Powerful Nations of the world are at the mercy of the COVID-19. America has made available, 3 Trillion US Dollars for distribution to the working class, the needy, and even businesses that may suffer economic downturn as a result of the pandemic.
Ghana as usual, has had to ran with our begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a Loan of 100 Million US Dollars to help deal with the crises at home.
Obviously, every President, no matter how dumb he or she may be, will do everything within his constitutional mandate to protect his people from the spread of the disease, obviously to save lives. That is exactly what the President of Ghana has done and therefore do not need any Political points.
We are just lucky that the Virus did not originate from Africa and for that matter Ghana. Else, we would have seen the worse side as has been witnessed from most parts of the developed world. Because we are never really planned for such catastrophic eventualities.
We must all commend measures the Government has put in place to contain the spread of the Virus and the distribution of proper protective working gears to all those front line workers. The fight must be sustained especially at the land boarders where many suspected people could cross into the Country unchecked.
JUDICIOUS USE OF THE ONE HUNDRED MILLION US DOLLARS LOAN IS CRUCIAL.
As we commend the effort made so far by Government, I wish to also place enormous responsibility on them to make JUDICIOUS application of the IMF Loan, just for the purpose for which it was approved and also avoid any diversions into possible 2020 Political Campaign.
I would have wished that special BAILOUT FUND is set up from the US100 Million dollars IMF Loan for small businesses and the most deprived in constituencies that may be affected by the GOVERNMENT LOCKDOWN. That financial support needs to be done, besides all other measures already in place. 100 Million US Dollars is substantially a huge sum of money that could even grant GHS1000 relieve FUND to every adult home in Ghana and still be left with enough to deal with the crises on the ground.
LESSONS TO LEARN. There are a lot of lessons we must learn from what we are going through now.
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1. National Identification. Ghana has since President JA Kufour’s time not been able to complete issuing simple NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION CARDS. Even though Funds have always been approved for the purpose.
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2. Establishing physical addressing system that will trace the accommodation of every person in the Country.
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3. Establishing a National database of Property ownership.
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4. Seriously Fight Corruption in Ghana and reform the dysfunctional administrative systems.
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5. We need to fund the administrative functioning of the Center For Civic Education to bring the knowledge of emergencies into local languages at regional levels.
I am very hopeful that Ghana can get through this Pandemic with minimum casualties possible but in the end learn great lessons that will guide us through the future.
Samuel Ofori Ampofo.
Aspiring independent Presidential Candidate.
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