Wontumi Appeals To Obama For Bailout


Bernard Antwi-Boasiako and Barack Obama (R)
The Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, has called on world leaders, particularly the United States President, Barrack Obama, to help salvage Ghana’s economy from potential ruin, as government struggles to ward off the financial meltdown ahead of an IMF bailout plan.

According to him, the nation’s ailing economy, which is characterised by high rate of inflation, huge budget deficit and free fall of the cedi, is attributable to mismanagement and incompetence on the part of those at the helm of affairs.

The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government recently said it would seek an IMF bailout to tackle fiscal challenges and carry out

institutional reforms that would be able to sustain the macroeconomic stability.

But in a statement to the media, Mr Antwi-Boasiako said the President Mahama-led administration was clueless on how to deal with the country’s myriad of problems in all the sectors of the economy—from energy to health, education, agriculture, and road and transportation.

‘Several other sectors of the economy are suffering from similar mismanagement and therefore I reiterate my personal plea to the western leaders, especially President Barrack Obama, to offer the country some assistance to put the economy back on track,’ he stressed.

The NPP regional Chairman, who is popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, asserted that world leaders should see Ghana’s current economic

crisis as a major catastrophe just like the deadly Ebola disease that is wrecking havoc in West Africa.

He accused President John Mahama of being insensitive to the plight of average Ghanaians whose purchasing power had shrunk in the face of galloping inflation and unfriendly taxes introduced recently.

Chairman Wontumi, who was reacting to a recent statement by the American President that his country would partner West African countries to curb the spread of the Ebola virus, maintained that Ghana needed the urgent attention of the world to free it from its current economic doldrums.

Health
On health, Antwi-Boasiako decried the insanitary conditions in the country and blamed the outbreak of cholera on government’s failure to effectively address poor sanitary conditions in the country.

He disclosed that cholera had ploughed down more than 5,000 people, with the death toll pegged at 50 in mid August this year.

According to the Ashanti regional NPP Chairman, reports indicated that health facilities were highly over stretched and were unable to cope with the average reported cases of about 70 infections daily.

On the deadly Ebola disease, Chairman Wontumi insisted that government had not told Ghanaians the whole truth regarding the status of the disease in the country and wanted world leaders to prevail over the government to be responsible to the governed.

Roads
He called on the NDC government to set out its priorities right in order to address the infrastructure deficit in the road sector.

In his view, government’s misapplication of funds had rendered the country vulnerable, with developmental gaps across cities, towns and villages.

From ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi
([email protected])

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