By Yaw
Ansah, GNA
Accra, Sept. 11, GNA – Mr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah,
a presidential aspirant of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), will
establish a welfare scheme for the party if elected as the flagbearer for
Election 2020.
He said the initiative was part of a
seven-point agenda released by his campaign team recently, which aimed at
strengthening the Party from the grassroots to the highest hierarchy.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News
Agency in Accra, Mr Spio-Garbrah proposed to establish an NDC Welfare Fund and
NDC Welfare Officers at the national, regional and constituency levels.
These officers, he explained, would attend to
the welfare of members, based on sets of regulations and guidelines that had
been developed together with his campaign teams.
“Already, I have established a reputation
within the NDC of consciously going out of my way to seek out party members’
welfare, especially disabled, and those facing physical challenges.
“During my recent visits to the Northern,
Upper East, Upper West, Central, Western, and Ashanti regions, I reached out to
the sick and disabled members of the Party in their homes or hospitals and/or
sent them relief items including cash,” he said.
Based on this tradition of quietly caring for
numerous members of the NDC family, Mr Spio-Garbrah proposed to formalize the
attention to the weak and aged within NDC, in the form of a Social Security
System.
He said the welfare scheme would ensure that
those who toiled for the Party at their prime stage would be supported in times
of need.
The Former Trade Minister said: “Throughout my
25 years of membership of the NDC, I have been underscoring the need for Party
members to care for each other and be each other’s keeper, in good times and in
bad.
“While in office as a Minister, I received and
assisted thousands of NDC Party members who often thronged to my office for one
form of assistance or another,” he said.
The seven-point agenda include: the creation
of business development committees at the national and regional levels,
establishment of a credit union, building of constituency offices, and
strengthening the women’s wing of the NDC.
The rest are helping to provide education,
skills training and jobs for the youth and spending adequate personal time as
flagbearer and president with party members and elders.
GNA