General News of Wednesday, 8 April 2020

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

We don’t want Akufo-Addo’s coronavirus promises to end up like ‘galamsey’ fight – Sammy Gyamfi

National Communications Officer of NDC, Sammy Gyamfi National Communications Officer of NDC, Sammy Gyamfi

Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress, Sammy Gyamfi has expressed fear about the several promises President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has made with regards to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

He said the opposition NDC is convinced that the Akufo-Addo-led administration may not actualize the promises and strategies laid out to fight the deadly pandemic in the coming days.

According to him, his party has been quite vocal about the president’s recent addresses to the nation because the promises made so far are gradually becoming like those he made about the fight against corruption, 'galamsey' and industrial recession in the country.

Sammy Gyamfi says though the president’s promises with specific regards to the provision of PPEs to frontline health workers are laudable, not much has been provided to alleviate the plight of these workers.

“It’s good to promise, it’s good to make all these flowery announcements but the most important thing is implementation. We don’t want this to be like the 1 million dollars per constituency promise or the promise to fight ‘galamsey’ or the promise to fight corruption which are all pipe dreams today. We want the president to walk the talk…,” he said while stating his party’s position on GHOneTV’s State of Affairs, Tuesday, April 7 2020.

Adding that, “it’s all about talk talk talk, we’re not seeing much relative to action. For example test kits, we were told the government had ordered test kits but whether the test kits will arrive today or tomorrow only God knows... The Ghana Medical Association only yesterday issued a statement that we still don’t have the PPEs…Already seven doctors and nurses have been infected…”

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in his addresses has announced plans by his government to procure PPEs for health workers but Sammy Gyamfi says per reliable information available to him, all those are yet to be delivered to health workers.

He said, “we’re living in a country where we celebrate flowery speeches and you know our president is very good at delivering flowery speeches, it was a good speech I must admit, but we don’t need speeches at this point to fix the problem we find ourselves in…The most important thing is the implementation of the promises and the assurance we given by the president in those wonderful speeches. So far, we haven’t seen much in relation to actualizing the promises he’s been giving us.”