The New Patriotic Party has christened September as a month of fulfilled promises following the implementation of its flagship education policy, free Senior High School.
Ag. General Secretary John Boadu emphasised at a press conference Thursday, “September will surely be written in the annals of Ghana history as a month of fulfillment and prosperity for the Ghanaian people.”
The Akufo-Addo government has disbursed more than 280million cedis to cover the bills of more than 440,000 first-year students in more than 470 senior high schools across the country for the first term.
The NPP then in opposition, persisted with the promise to provide free SHS after promising it in its 2012 manifesto and repeating it in the 2016 elections which it won.
John Boadu gloated that “cynics” within the opposition NDC who branded the policy as first impossible and later as unsustainable had been silenced. The Acting General Secretary made special mention of former Education Minister Lee Ocran who served a year as minister in the Mills-led NDC government from 2012 to 2013.
It was Lee Ocran who said on September 10, 2012, “Ladies and gentlemen I want to tell you that if it were easy to do free education, Kwame Nkrumah would have been the first person to do it”.
“It is happening live under his Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo,” John Boadu trolled the former minister.
He said President Akufo-Addo has demonstrated beyond words his “unwavering” commitment to education despite the negative refrain from the NDC.
John Boadu also mentioned the paperless port system introduced to severely cut the time spent on clearing goods at the ports from two weeks to four hours. Its other aim of plugging loopholes in revenue collection has yielded a 56% increase in revenue compared to the same period in 2016, the Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has claimed.
Revenue from the ports was GHc130 million in the first week of September 2016 but has jumped to GHc213 million in the same period in September 2017.
John Boadu said Ghanaians should expect the government to soon fulfill another of its promise to pay nursing and teacher trainee allowances scrapped under the NDC government.
“What a blessed month”, he exclaimed.
