Editor of the Chronicle Newspaper, Ebo Quansah has taken a swipe at Deputy Minister of Information, James Agyenim-Boateng for remarks he claims sought to denigrate the taxi driving profession whiles on a radio programme discussing the cabinet reshuffle.
Mr. Agyenim-Boateng in an interview with Joy FM concerning the criticism from the main opposition party, the NPP, that the ministerial reshuffle effected by President John Evans Atta Mills was a diversionary tactics to douse the flames ignited by the price hikes in petroleum products, described the erstwhile Kufuor government as having the reputation of giving ministerial positions to taxi drivers.
In comparing appointees under President Mills’ government whom he described as “competent people managing the nation’s affairs” to appointees of the Kufuor administration, he wondered whether Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey’s own itinerant stops as Chief of Staff, Information Minister, and later Minister for Tourism and Modernization of the Capital city – where he only managed to modernize a state bungalow and attempted to buy it, – was musical chairs.
But speaking on e-TV’s Breakfast TV Newspaper Review programme, the veteran journalist and former President of the Sports Writer’s Association of Ghana (SWAG), who felt the Deputy Minister was being disrespectful to and contemptible of taxi-drivers, described his comments as unfortunate.
“After misinforming Ghana on many occasions, he is calling people (ministers) taxi drivers. This is an insult to the taxi driving profession even though the so called “taxi driver” performed better,” he noted
To him, Mr. Agyenim-Boateng had no justification to compare Kufuor’s appointees to taxi drivers, and pointed out that those former ministers being branded as taxi drivers, even performed better than some of the ministers in the current Mills’ administration.
“Comparing the caliber of Kufuor’s appointees with some people including himself, we know the difference…Some of them were taxi drivers…but these ministers are misinformers, we know the difference,” he added.
However, the Editor of the New Punch newspaper, Ebenezer Ato Sam, popularly known as Baby Ansaba who was also on the same programme, tried to hold brief for the Deputy Minister but struggled vainly to justify the comment.
He dismissed the assertion that James Agyenim-Boateng’s remark was an insult, and added that people are only being ‘mischievous’ by ‘misquoting’ him (Deputy Minister).