North Tongu lawmaker, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has raised concerns over the four million cedis allocated for government communication in the 2021 budget.

According to him, such an allocation should be rather made to the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) since their education and public campaigns are more required in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

“This business of classifying Government Communication as a Government Flagship Programme and allocating hefty sums (GHC6million in 2020 and GHC4million in 2021) must stop. Note that the Ministry of Information has a separate budget.

“Meanwhile, the Goods and Services budget for the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has been drastically cut from GHC7,016,420 in 2020 to GHC4,291,295 in the 2021 budget,” Mr Ablakwa wrote in a statement.

He added: “One would have thought that during a pandemic where credible public education is a critical requirement to fight vaccine hesitancy and all the conspiracy theories out there, the NCCE budget would rather have been raised substantially and government communicators asked to take a rest. In any case, it is trite knowledge that in periods like these, the general public prefers to listen to non-partisan experts and not government propagandists.

“I humbly suggest that government reallocates that GHS4million to the NCCE. It’s not late to rethink this. Don’t squeeze out additional taxes from the people in these tough times only to fund government propaganda as a flagship programme”.