President John Dramani Mahama has announced that government would in the coming years eliminate the use of kerosene in communities by providing electricity.
“In our manifesto, we have come out with the energy for all policy, where every community with a population of 500 and beyond will be provided with electricity and by the next four years most communities would have benefitted from the policy,” he added.
President Mahama announced this when he addressed students of Gbewaa College of Education at Pusiga in the Upper East region as part of his three-day tour of the region.
He said communities that would not be connected to the national electricity grid would in the interim be provided with solar lighting system, adding “a chunk of the Chinese loan would be invested in the energy sector and hopefully by the end of the next four years, most communities in the country would have been hooked to the national electricity grid.”
President Mahama said the use of kerosene was expensive and detrimental to the health of humans and the elimination of its use would bring the citizens to another level of development.
On education, President Mahama was optimistic that by the next four years majority of the schools under trees would have been eliminated and urged the electorate to assess the performance of the NDC in the past four years and retain them in power.
He said government would continue to strengthen structures and institutions at the basic levels that would provide solid foundation for quality and affordable education at the second cycle and tertiary levels in the coming years.
President Mahama expressed satisfaction at the performance of teachers in the country over the years and promised to improve on structures at the training colleges that would further enhance the performance of teachers in future.
“In Ghana now over 60 per cent of our teachers at the basic levels are untrained and government will continue to improve on facilities that would brighten the chances of teachers and their students.”
Mr Haruna Iddrisu, Minister for Communications denounced the New Patriotic Party for what he described as ‘coming out with untenable promises to Ghanaians’ and called on the electorate to ignore such promises and vote massively for the NDC.
He said NDC as a social democratic party was more sensitive to the plight of Ghanaians than any other party .