The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia has stated that the ruling party is currently facing financial difficulties.

The former Member of Parliament (MP) for Wenchi West said the situation was so devastating that various party programmes had been adversely affected. General Mosquito, as he is affectionately called told Angel FM in Kumasi on Wednesday morning that the NDC’s ongoing outreach programme was one project affected by the lack of funds.

He explained that the initiative was commendable because it was helping the Party’s hierarchy to have close interaction with its foot soldiers to listen to their concerns and disseminate information about what the government was doing for them. “This initiative from all intents and purposes is laudable but you know it requires money before the executive can travel the length and breadth of the country to meet with foot soldiers, General Mosquito emphasized.

According to him, if the NDC had started the outreach programme long ago, most of the current agitations by the foot soldiers would not have occurred because they would have been fed with the right information for them to appreciate government’s work. He said the Party was currently cash-trapped and unable to sponsor intended programs because of an inability to mobilize funds from members. As usual the NDC General Secretary attributed this to what he described as the poor state of the economy.

He argued that because the economy was not on a sound footing, members of the ruling party were not getting enough money in their pockets to enable them donate to the Party. “Because of the poor economy we inherited, we were forced to cut down expenditure as part of austerity measures geared towards resurrecting the ailing economy, so there is not much money in the system for our members to get hold onto in order to be able to donate to the Party,” he stressed.

Commenting on the current spate of the dismissals of some Ministers and other government functionaries, General Mosquito stated that due diligence was followed in each case. Insisting that President Mills had never been pressured by foot solders or party executives to dismiss any member of his government, the NDC general Secretary said the process was effected transparently.

He disclosed that unlike the ex-President Rawlings regime where government officials were arbitrarily sacked, government functionaries in the Mills administration are given fair opportunity to defend charges against them before they are fired. “Every member of our government who has been sacked cannot look God in the eye and say he was not given an opportunity to react to allegations preferred against him or her before he or she was sacked.”

He explained that in the case of the dismissed Upper West Regional Minister, Mahamud Khalid, the presidency gave him enough time to prove that the allegation leveled against him were frivolous. “I can tell you that he was summoned to the Castle, where I was present and the President told him that he wanted to monitor him for a month to see for himself whether the accusations against him were genuine or not,” General Mosquito stated.

He said President Mills finally decided to crack the whip of the Regional Minister when he failed to prove that the allegations being championed against him were unfounded. According to the NDC General Secretary, the violent incident which preceded the dismissal of Mahamud Khalid was just unfortunate a mere coincidence as the decision had already been taken.