General News of Thursday, 12 December 2019

Source: starrfmonline.com

Withdraw 50% increment on CST – NDC to gov’t

Sam George | MP for Ningo Prampram Sam George | MP for Ningo Prampram

The opposition NDC has called on government to immediately withdraw the 50% increase in the Communication Services Tax.

This, including the trade-off of non expiry of data and tariff increases, according to them has disadvantaged Ghanaians and stiffed affordability.

They are also wondering why government will preach digitization but is rather making it more expensive for Ghanaians to access it.

MP for Ningo-Prampram Samuel George made this demand at the Moment of Truth Series of the party.

He said “the future of the communication space looks very bleak under the current crop of mis-managers. We are calling on President AKuffo-Addo to immediately withdraw the 50% increase in CST. The trade-off of non-expiry of data and tariff increases have disadvantaged the Ghanaians more. We also demand a forensic audit of Kelvin gvg’s contract and its operations so far.”

He went on to say “we cannot have four more years of an arbitrary increase in taxation, four more years of the killing of industry and business in the communication sector. four more years of policy incoherence where Dr Bawumiah claims that we are driving digital inclusion and you are are increasing the cost of access to inclusion.”

“In this industry the talk about connectivity comes with affordability. When you connect a community and it is not affordable, it is actually financial loss to the state because then the people cannot use it,” he ended.