Aide to the Rawlings’, Kofi Adams has said the newly commissioned Nsawam Cannery would have long been in operation had it not been “for the wickedness of the former New Patriotic Party administration.”

Over the weekend, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, a former First Lady, commissioned the Nsawam Adoagyir Cannery Plant, valued at one million dollars. Nana Konadu said the company now has 110 workers and expressed the hope that in two years it would be increased to 2000 to cut down on the unemployment rate in the country. She said GHC2.7 billion was used to purchase the company in November 1995 with a view of reducing unemployment.

However, in a statement signed by its General Secretary, Kwadwo Owusu Afrieyie, the opposition New Patriotic party accused the Rawlings’ of acquiring the cannery almost for free, describing it as ‘unfortunate’.

The statement said “obviously, Mr Rawlings and his wife were attempting to play clever by their references to some alleged looting of state property under the NPP government. They knew their questionable acquisition of the state-owned Nsawan Cannery was an indelible scar on their name and a loud evidence of their insatiable greed for material things. If they had any shame at all, they would not have commissioned the cannery in the full glare of the public and the media cameras.” Responding to the statement on Xfm 95.1, a privately owned commercial radio station in Accra, Kofi Adams cautioned the NPP not to comment on the Nsawam Cannery issue as it was their government that withheld its commissioning. “Even before the NPP administration, this company (Nsawam Cannery) would have been inaugurated long ago, and the job opportunity it is creating today would have been available long ago, but for the wickedness of the NPP administration, it has taken such a long time for this company to take off”.

Reacting to the assertion by the NPP that Mrs Rawlings acquired the cannery ‘almost for free’, Mr Adams said “then it means we really had a bunch of persons who were undeserving to rule this country if indeed the Nsawam Cannery was given to anybody for free”.

To him, the NPP had the opportunity for eight years to look into all assets that were acquired and had the rights to reverse all assets they think were not properly acquired.

He said the cannery was among the State Owned Enterprises that were placed on divestiture, adding that the 31st December Women’s Movement acquired the edifice on merit through the Divestiture Implementation Committee. “Indeed, the Nsawam Cannery was advertised so anybody who was interested had the right to bid for it. People were not interested, the women saw that with what they were doing, they could turn it around with their labour and that was exactly what the women did. I am yet to see anybody that presented the bid as a competing company for which they denied them whey had the higher bid”.

Kofi Adams said the NPP only churned out this statement because the party when in power did very little for Ghanaian women.

Story by Abena Asiedua Tenkorang/ Robert Israel Xfm 95.1 Accra, Ghana