Humphrey delineates NPP Agric Sector Bunkum

The schemes and intrigues of NPP politicians don’t seize to flabbergast me. These schemes and intrigues couldn’t have been happening if the NPP politician had respect for the citizenry and does not see them as a gullible bunch that can be easily manipulated and deceived. I have observed with much hilarity the hopeless interventions that have been rolled out by the Government of Ghana as the December 7, 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary elections draw nigh and nigh. WHY ARE THESE NPP CROOKS MANIPULATING THE VOTERS REGISTER? WHY OH WHY… The NPP has been bragging of experience and achievements. If it is a question of experience in government and elections and achievements, Professor Mills and the NDC records far out weight that of Nana Akuffo Addo and the NPP. Professor Mills was Vice President for four years; head of economic management team during the NDC era; Commissioner of Internal revenue Service; Professor of law in numerous universities around world. He had successfully run in two national campaigns and has a history of winning massively in five of the 10 regions of Ghana. In 2004, against an NPP incumbent president, he polled over 45% of the total votes cast at odds with the projections of many of the NPP so called pundits, shamefully including some in the media, who are willing to bury their professional ethnics in the gutters of Accra. Professor Mills and NDC had these votes against the backdrop of NPP vile campaigns and political percussions. Is it a lack of common sense among these pundits or it is a denial of the strength of the Mills candidacy? I can say that he won the 2004 elections, but the NPP stole the verdict. WHY DID THE SUPREME COURT NOT RULE OVER THE COURT ISSUE ABOUT THE ILLEGITIMACY OF THE RESULTS? WHY DID THE ELECTORAL COMMISION BURN THE EVIDENTS OF THE COURT CASE IN THE BALLOT BOXES? WHY THE ANNOYED JAKE OBETSEBI-LAMPTEY DID ANNOUNCED THE ELECTION? We all know Professor Mills won the election. Election 2008 is going to be a landmark election in the history of Ghana. The election is going to be a fight between the forces of vindictiveness, corruption, tribalism, witch-hunting, looting brigade, drug dealers, bribery, thievery, armed robbery, and nepotism that Nana Akuffo Addo represents, and the forces of progress, good quality of life for all Ghanaians, peace and tranquility of Professor Mills and the NDC. Ghanaians should not forget that the burden of the vindictiveness and political persecution in the Kufour government is the hobbyhorse of Nana Akuffo Addo. He was so ingrained in the culture of vindictiveness that he was prepared battle it with the President, leaving President Kufour with no option but to remove him from the Attorney and Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where is vindictive nature could restrained. To understand the history of Nana Akuffo Addo’s vindictive culture, I urge readers to revisit what happened to the UP tradition in the 1979. Nana Addo and the Akim wing of the UP tradition single handedly cause the divisions in the tradition giving Dr. Limann, a neophyte in Ghanaian politics, an upper hand. The 1979 event defined Akufo Addo in his own party, hence in all the primaries that he subsequently ran he lost miserable to President Kufour, even in the recent election he could not secure clear mandate from his own party delegates against new candidates without experience. How then could such candidate be unifying force to secure victory for the NPP? NPP SHALL SUFFER HUMILIATION COME DECEMBER… Some of the reforms that have made Ghana what it is today include the financial sector reforms without which the banking system would have collapsed by now. NDC embarked on massive restructuring of our infrastructural facilities such as the ports and harbors, the roads and the telecommunications networks. We also embarked on the revival of the imploded mining sector. Indeed it is all too easy to send a computer to a village when the thorny task of extending power to that community has already been done. Without our financial sector and foreign exchange reforms, there would have been no banks and no remittances for the NPP to talk about. And without our structural reforms there is no way Ghana could have benefited from debt forgiveness. THIS IS ALL NPP BUNKUM…WE SHALL OVERCOME COME DECEMBER 2008…

(a)Outboard motors According to Mr. Mac Manu, The NARCOTIC PEDDLING PEOPLE CHAIRMAN, and a total of 338 out board motors have been given to fish farmers under a special credit scheme since the NPP came to power. WHAT ARE YOU INSINUATING CHIEF CROOK…

It might interest Mr. Mac Manu, the NPP Chairman to know that in 1999/2000 under a second credit line from the African Development Bank, the NDC government; through the Agricultural Development Bank, ordered 5,250 outboard motors with accompanying nets, twines, repel and spare parts for our fishermen. This amounted to 75 per cent of the needs of the 7000 canoes in the country. THIS IS ACHEVEMENT… NDC PAPA NONO...

Through the scheme, the NDC government created an additional 42, 000 jobs in the fishing industry. The availability of the inputs led to an increase in the annual yield of the industry by 93,000 tones. NDC shall repeat this policy under their Agric programme in 2009 and beyond. Meanwhile, the price of a gallon of pre-mix fuel which was 5,000cedis in 2000 has increased six-fold to 30,000 cedis, while the price of an outboard motor -Yamaha [40HP] has increased from 5.7 million cedis in 2000 to a current figure of 36 million cedis. WHOO…NPP BAAGBE WO…

(b) Fish processors and distributors According to the NPP Chairman, 3000 fish processors and distributors have been supported through micro-credit since the Kufuor regime assumed office. The NDC did much more than that. NDC did not only introduce the Chorkor Smoker, that improved on the efficiency in the industry but they also introduced micro-credits for more many thousands of fish processors and distributors nationwide under various microfinance schemes.

Long before the Ministry of Finance introduced micro-financing as a poverty reduction strategy, in 1998/99 the Agricultural Development Bank had carried out pilot schemes on micro-credit in the Central and Western Regions. In two fishing communities in the Mfantsiman West constituency alone, about 100 fish processors were supported with the equivalent of about $600 each in 1994/95. The scheme was further replicated in other districts and regions.

Micro-financing is no big deal. NDC pioneered it in Ghana and we intend to deepen it and make it more effective “not as a payout to party officials but as a means of increasing output and earnings in both the farm and non-farm, fishing and non-fishing sectors of our small towns and villages, while in the urban areas it will be targeted at small scale enterprises in both the formal and informal sectors. LEAST WE FORGET…NIIBI AYIBONTE AND OKULEY NORTEY sold all the fishing nets and the outboard motors the NPP IS BRAGGING ABOUT. THESE TWO NPP MP’S WILL FACE THE LAW WHEN NDC ASSUMES OFFICE COME JANUARY 2009. THESE CROOKS WERE FIRED WITHOUT ANY FORM OF PUNISHMENT…WE SHALL SEE…

(c) Cotton, rice and poultry industries Why did (for obvious reasons), the NPP Chairman failed to mention his party achievements in the strategic agricultural industries cotton, rice and poultry industries. The reason is obvious: under President Kufuor charge the three industries which employed hundreds of thousand of farmers have collapsed and so has the textile industry where the labor size has declined by around 90 per cent from 30,000 to 3, 000 workers within the past seven years.

Under our Agricultural Development Programme which was implemented between 1995 and 1998, the productivity of farmers in the cotton industry was increased from 822 kg/ha in 1995 to 924 kg /ha in 1998/99. An additional 36, 000 hectares of land was cultivated by 75, 000 families in four otherwise deprived regions-Upper West and East, Northern and Brong Ahafo regions. The intervention resulted in an increased national output of 29.437 tonnes of seed cotton, 12, 939 tonnes of lint cotton, and 15, 505 tonnes of cotton- seed in 1998/99.

For the poultry sector, NDC imported 11, 737 tonnes of yellow maize, 2, 318 tonnes of soybeans, 655 tonnes of fishmeal, 20, 160 hatching eggs, 17, 000 day jobs, 20 tonnes of lysine and other feed ingredients. These imports supported the production of 314,000 broilers and 667, 000 layers which culminated in the production of 705 tonnes of chicken and 155 million eggs annually. More than 20,000 jobs were created through the intervention, apart from other indirect jobs created in the maize production sub-sector. We supported and created the enabling environment for Darko farms, Afariwaa farms, Q farms, Mfum farms and others. These have all collapsed under the corrupt government NPP. NPP DON’T LET ME VOMIT WITH YOUR BUNKUM…

The NDC government undertook the Northern Region Lowland Rice Project in 1996-2000. The project covered rice production on a total of 1,000 hectares by small scale farmers in three valleys Kulda-Varong (Damango District) and Awry (Woriwori) and Sillium valleybs both in Tamale District. The project was aimed at providing support for hundreds of families and to be the precursor to large scale rice production in the Northern Region to be linked to the installation of rice mills for the local production of world-grade rice.

The Northern small scale rice project and the Aveyime rice project have both been abandoned by the NPP government. The NPP chairman claims that 120,000 jobs have been created under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP). Be that as it may, it is a fraction of the one million people who registered as being unemployed during Kufuors nation-wide registration of unemployed people in 2003. What has happened to the others? On a daily basis the number of young people who sell dog chains and tooth pick in Accra and the regional capitals are increasing. PEOPLE KNOW…NO KIDDING

The adverse thing about the NYEP is that the jobs are not sustainable. How many of the young men and women would want o continue to be traffic wardens for the next four years and beyond? How many of the young men and women would wish to continue sitting at dispensaries under the semblance of NYEP for the next four years? How many of these young people would like to continue clearing our streets in the next four years?

As we noted above, within four years, we created 42,000 in the fishing industry, 20,000 jobs in the poultry industry and more than 100, 000 jobs in the cotton and rice industries and these were sustainable jobs in the agricultural sector alone. From SSNIT records, we created 180,000jobs between 1996 and 2000. In seven and a half years Kufuor has done just about 30,000 in the midst of plenty, so-called macro-economic stability and four months worth of external reserves. Our young and frustrated unemployed men and women need jobs, real sustainable jobs not cold statistics that have ceased to give hope to any section of our compatriots other than NPP propagandists and those who provide them with their means of livelihoods.

NDC intends to do much better when we roll out our job creation plan under the next NDC government. NDC WILL DO BETTER STARTING FROM JANUARY 2009.

Ladies and Gentlemen: you can now compare and contrast the difference between the NPP and NDC achievements under the Agric sector. This is not rocket science… NPP has deceived and failed Ghanaians in that regard. NDC did better and will continue to put people first in their I CARE FOR YOU slogan. VOTE NDC FOR A BETTER GHANA.

I WILL ASK AGAIN “IF GOLD (K4) ROT, WHAT WILL IRON (AKUFO-ADDO) DO”

WATCH OUT FOR PART TWO

Humphrey Tettey Mensah (booker tee) htmensah@yahoo.com